A type of plastic used to make, especially
in the past, photographic film

Celuloide

Celluloide

Celuloid

Celulóide

Selüloit

Banda de celuloid

Cinema

A theatre where
people pay to watch films

Cine

Sala
cinematografica

Kino

Cinema

Sinema

Cinema

Cinemagoer

A person who
regularly goes to watch films at the cinema

Aficionado al cine

Cinefilo

Kinoman, Kinomanka

Cinéfilo

Sinema izleyicisi

Cinefil

Cinematic

Relating to the
cinema

Cinematográfico

Cinematografico

Kinowy

Cinematográfico

Sinematik

cinematografic

Cinematography

The art and methods
of film photography

Cinematografía

Cinematografia

Kinematografia

Cinematografia

Sinematografi

Cinematografie

Clapperboard

A device, used by
people making films, that consists of a board with two parts that are hit
together at the start of filming

Claqueta

Ciack

Klaps

Placa

Klaket

Clacheta

Clip

A short part of a
film or television programme

Clip

Filmato

Klip

Clip

Klip

Videoclip

Close-up

A photograph taken
from a short distance that gives a very detailed picture

Acercamiento

Primo piano

Zbliżenie

Primeiro Plano

Yakın

Prim plan

Computer-generated
imagery

The process of
using computers to create pictures or characters in film and television

Imágenes generadas
por ordenador

Immagini prodotte
al computer

Wszelkie elementy
obrazu, wygenerowane przy pomocy komputera

Imagem gerada por
computador

Görüntü

Imagini realizate
pe computer

Costume designer

person who designs costumes for a film or stage production

Diseñador de vestuario

Costumista

Kostiumograf

Responsável pelo
guarda roupa

Kostüm

tasarımcıs

Costumier

Credit (list of
names)

A list of people
who helped to make a film or a television programme, that is shown or
announced at the beginning or the end of it

Ficha técnica

Titoli di coda

Napisy końcowe

Ficha Técnica

Kredi

Fisa tehnica

Director

The person who
directs a film

Director

Regista

Reżyser

Realizador

Yönetmen

Regizor

Director of
photography

A chief over
the camera and lighting crews working on a film, television
production

Director de
fotografía

Direttore della
fotografia

Autor zdjęć do
filmu

Diretor de
fotografia

Görüntü

yönetmeni

Director de
fotografie

Fade out

To (cause to) lose
colour, brightness or strength gradually

Desvanecer

Disolvenza

Zanikanie

Desvanecer

Karartmak

Estompare/inchidere
prin intunecare

Film

A series of moving
pictures, usually shown in a cinema or on television and often telling a
story

Película

Film

Film

Filme

Film

Film

Film star

A famous cinema
actor

Estrella de cine

Stella del cinema

Gwiazda filmowa

Estrela de cinema

Film yıldızı

Vedetă de film

Filmgoer
(moviegoer)

A person who
regularly goes to watch films at the cinema

Aficionado al cine

Frequentatore di
cinema

Bywalec kin

Cinéfilo

Sinema izleyicisi

Cinefil

Film editor

Person who edits
the film

Editor de cine

Tecnico del
montaggio

Montażysta

Editor

Editör

Editor

Filming

The activity of
making a film

Rodaje

Filmare/ girare le
scene

Filmowanie

Filmar

çekim

Filmare

Filmstrip

A length of film
with a set of pictures that are shown one at a time

Tira de película

Pellicola
cinematografica

Kadr

Película

Film şeridi

Pelicula
cinematografica

Frame

One of the pictures
on a strip of photographic film, or one of the single pictures that together
form a television or cinema film

Enmarcado

Fotogramma

Klatka

Enquadramento

çerçeve

Cadru

Freeze-frame

A single picture
from a film, or the device that allows you to stop a film at a particular
point and look at a single picture

Imágen congelada

Blocco di
fotogramma

Stopklatka

Parar a imagem
(congelar)

Dondurulmuş

çerçeve

Stop cadru

Gaffer

The person
responsible for the lights and other electrical equipment used when making a
film or television programme

Técnico de
iluminación

Tecnico delle luci

Mistrz oświetlenia

Técnico de luzes

Işıkçı

Tehnician de lumini

Location

A place

Ubicación

Ambientazione

Miejsce, plan
zdjęciowy

Localização

Konum

Locație

Makeup artist

A person applying
make-up

Maquillador

Truccatore

Charakteryzator

Técnico de
maquilhagem

Makyajcı

Responsabil machiaj

Motion picture

A movie

Película

Pellicola

Film

Filme

Sinema

Film

Movie

A film shown in a
cinema or on television and often telling a story

Película

Film

Film

Filme

Sinema

Film

Premiere

The first public
performance of a play or another type of entertainment

Estreno

La Prima proiezione
di un film

Premiera

Estreia

Gala

Premieră

Project

To cause a film,
image or light to appear on a screen

Proyectar una
película

Proiettare

Wyświetlić

Projetar

Proje

A proiecta

Projection

The act of
projecting a film or an image onto a screen or wall

Proyección

Proiezione

Projekcja

Projeção

Projeksiyon

Proiecție

Projector

A device for
showing films or images on a screen or another surface

Proyector

Proiettore

Projektor

Projetor

Projektör

Proiector

Release

To allow something
to be shown in public; if a company releases a film or musical recording, it
allows the film to be shown in cinemas

Estrenar

Distribuzione

Wydać

Lançamento

Sunum

Lansare

Remake

To make a new film
that has a story or title similar to an old one

Nueva versión

Restauro

Remake

Segunda edição

Yeniden yapmak

Reeditarea unui fim

Retake

To take a
photograph or shoot a part of a film again

Filmar de nuevo

Ripetizione/
replica

Na nowo nakręcić
scenę

Filmar novamente

Geri almak

A refilma

Screen

A flat surface in a
cinema, on a television, or as part of a computer, on which pictures are
shown

Pantalla

Schermo

Ekran

Ecrã

Ekran

Ecran

Screening

A showing of a film

Proyección

Sceneggiare

Projekcja

Apresentação

Tarama

Ecranizare

Screenplay

The text for a
film, including the words to be spoken by the actors and instructions for the
cameras

Guión

Sceneggiatura

Scenariusz

Guião

Senaryo

Scenariu

Script

writtencopyfortheuse of performers in filmsandplays

Guión

Testo

Scenariusz

Argumento

Senaryo

Scenariu

Script supervisor

A supervisor that makes sure that the production has
continuous verbal and visual integrity

Supervisor
guionista

Supervisore testi

Diretor do
argumento

Supervizör

Director scenariu

Sequence

A part of a film
that shows a particular event or a related series of events

Secuencia

Sequenza

Sekwencja

Sequência

Dizi

Secvență

Shoot

To use a camera to
record a video or take a photograph

Filmar

Girare

Nakręcić scenę

Filmar

Sürgün

A filma

Shot

A photograph; a
short piece in a film in which there is a single action

Foto

Scatto

Ujęcie

Imagem

Atış

Instantaneu

Show

A public event

Espectáculo

Spettacolo

Pokaz

Espetáculo

Gösteri

Spectacol

Slapstick

A type of humorous
acting in which the actors behave in a silly way, such as by throwing things,
falling over

Momento humorístico

Comico

Błazenada

Momento de humor

şakşak

Moment umoristic

Slide projector

A machine that
shines a light through a photograph made into a slide to produce a larger
image on a screen

Proyector

Proiettore di
diapositive

Rzutnik

Projetor

Slayt projectörü

Proiector

Slow motion

A way of showing
pictures from a film or television programme at a slower speed than normal

Camara lenta

Moviola/
rallentatore

Zwolnione tempo

Câmara lenta

Ağır çekim

Prezentare lenta

Sound editor

Person responsible
for the sounds in a film

Editoe de sonido

Tecnico del suono/
montatore della colonna sonora

Reżyser dźwięku

Editor de som

Ses editörü

Editor de sunet

Sound effect

In a radio or
television programme or a film, one of the sounds other than speech or music
that are added to make it seem more exciting or real

Efecto de sonido

Effetti sonori

Efekt dźwiękowy

Efeitos sonoros

Ses efekti

Efecte de sunet

Sound man

Técnico de sonido

Addetto al suono

Dźwiękowiec

Técnico de Som

Sesadam

Sunetist

Soundtrack

The sounds,
especially the music, of a film, or a separate recording of this

Banda sonora

Colonna sonora

Ścieżka dźwiękowa

Banda sonora

Ses bandı

Coloana sonora

Storyboard

(in films and
television) a series of drawings or images showing the planned order of
images

Guión gráfico

Storyboard/
bozzetti

Storyboard

Esboço sequencial

Hikaye sırası

Secvente
desenate/storyboard

Studio (recording
studio)

A room with special
equipment where television or radio programme or music recordings are made

Estudio de
grabación

Studio di
registrazione

Studio nagrań

Estudio

Stutyo

Studio de
inregistrari

Stunt

An exciting action,
usually in a film, that is dangerous or appears dangerous and usually needs
to be done by someone skilled

Truco

Caduta/ acrobazia

Sztuczka
kaskaderska

Duplo

Hüner

Cascadorie

Subtitles

Words shown at the
bottom of a film or television picture to explain what is being said

Subtítulos

Sottotitoli

Napisy

Legendas

Altyazı

Subtitluri

The big screen

Films that are
shown in cinemas

Gran pantalla

Grande schermo

Wielki ekran

Grande ecrã

Büyük ekran

Marele ecran

The silver screen

The film industry

Industria de cine

Industria del
cinema

Srebrny ekran

Indústria
cinematográfica

Beyaz perde

Industia
cinematografica

Time-lapse

Used to refer to a
method of filming very slow actions by taking a series of single pictures
over a period of time and then putting them together to show the action
happening very quickly

Lapso de tiempo

Intervallo di tempo

Technika poklatkowa

Lapso de tempo

Hızlandırılmış

Interval de timp

Title

The name of a film,
book, painting, piece of music

Título

Titolo

Tytuł

Título

Başlık

Titlu

Track

One of several
songs or pieces of music on a CD or another recording

Pista

Traccia

Ścieżka, utwór

Faixa

Iz

Melodie

Viewing

An occasion for a
special look at an exhibition, film

Visualización

Visione

Pokaz, oglądanie

Amostragem

Görüntüleme

Vizualizare

Zoom

Fixed camera; entire scene magnified
equally often plunging viewer

Zoom/ Enfocar

Zoom

Zoom

Zoom

Yakınlaştırma

Apropiere, mărire

Type of film

Spanish

Italian

Polish

Portuguese

Turkish

Romanian

Action film

Película de acción

Film d'azione

Film akcji,
kino akcji

Filmes de ação

Aksiyon filmi

Film de
acțiune

Adventure
film

Película de
aventuras

Film d'avventura

Film
przygodowy

Filmes de Aventuras

Macera filmi

Film de
aventuri

Animated film

Película
animada

Film d'animazione

Film
animowany

Desenhos Animados

Animasyon

Film de
animație

Biography

Biografía

Biografia

Biografia

Biografia

Biyografi

Biografie

Cartoons

Dibujos
animados

Cartoni animati

Kreskówka

Desenhos Animados

çizgifilm

Desene
animate

Comedy

Comedia

Commedia

Komedia

Comédia

Komedi

Comedie

Documentary
film

Documental

Documentario

Film
dokumentalny

Documentário

Belgesel

Film
documentar

Drama

Tragedia

Film
drammatico

Dramat

Drama

Drama

Drama

Horror film

Película de
terror

Film horror

Horror

Filme de Terror

Korku

Film de
groaza

Romance/ love
story

Novela
/historia de amor

Film d'amore

Romans

Romance / História de amor

Romantik

Film de
dragoste

Musical

Película
musical

Musical

Musical

Musical

Musikal

Film muzical

Romantic
comedy

Comedia
romántica

Commedia
romantica

Komedia
romantyczna

Comédia Romântica

Romantik
komedy

Comedie
romantica

Science
fiction film

Película de
ciencia ficción

Film
scientifico

Film s.f.

Filme de ficção científica

Bilim kurgu

Film
stiințifico- fantastic

Thriller

Película de
misterio

Thriller

Dreszczowiec

Filme de suspense

Gerilim

Film thriller

War film

Película de
guerra

Film di
guerra

Film wojenny

Filme de guerra

Savaş

Film de
război

Western

Película
western

Western

Western

Filme de cowboys

Batı

Film western

II.Types of films

III. Famous actors
and actresses

Spain: Penélope Cruz

Born in Spain in
1974, actress Penelope Cruz studied classical ballet at a young age and later
moved to Hollywood, California, to pursue acting. She soon landed roles
opposite the likes of Matt Damon and Tom Cruise. She won an Academy
Award—becoming the first Spanish actress to do so- for her performance in the
film Vicky Christina Barcelona. Cruz married her Vicky Cristina
Barcelona co-star, Spanish actor Javier Bardem, in 2010.

Penelope Cruz
Sanchez was born on April 28, 1974, in Alcobendas, Madrid, Spain. Cruz was born
as the eldest of three and a natural performer; her father, Eduardo, worked as
a car mechanic, and her mother, Encarna, was a hairdresser. As a child, Cruz
amused her family by re-enacting television commercials. Though a natural
actress, she took up dance for her choice of performance arts. She studied
classical ballet for nine years at Spain's National Conservatory, and then
moved to New York to dance under a series of prominent performers.

When she was 15
years old, Cruz found her true vocation after beating out 300 other girls at a
talent agency competition. Following this early success, she landed several
roles as a dancer for music videos, as well as a gig hosting Spanish TV's La
Quinta Marcha. Additionally, Cruz explored her more sensual side in the
French erotic TV series Serie Rose.

Penelope Cruz made
her film debut in 1992, in the dark film Jamón Jamón. The film's
director, who had been unable to cast Cruz as the lead in another film because
of her young age, waited until she was old enough for his next film. Her
performance earned her nominations for both the Spanish Actors Union Newcomer
Award and the Goya Award (Spain's Academy Award) for best lead actress. A year
later, Cruz played Luz in The Age of Beauty (1992). The film won an
Oscar (best foreign language film), virtually swept the Goya Awards and earned
Cruz the Spanish Actors Union Award for best supporting performance.

With an impressive
apprenticeship to the craft, Cruz earned her place in Spanish cinema as a
leading lady. Her resumé continued to grow over the following few years,
clocking up three or four films each year. In 1997, Cruz took the role of Isabel
Plaza Caballero in Carne Tremula—marking the first time that she worked
with internationally renowned director Pedro Almodóvar, who, in turn, became a
lifelong friend, as well as her vehicle for global fame. Cruz garnered further
critical recognition for her performance in the film.

Two years later, in
1999, Cruz landed a role in another film directed by Almodóvar, Todo Sobre
Mi Madre, which went on to win Oscar and a BAFTA (best foreign language
film) awards. With a series of well-respected movies under her belt, by this
time, Cruz was in demand on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

At the age of 25,
Cruz made the bold decision to move to Hollywood, California. Fully in command
and on top of her career, she took on the role of a control freak and successful
chef in Woman on Top (2000). That same year, she played the romantic
lead in Billy Bob Thornton's Western All the Pretty Horses. Both films
garnered critical success.

Cruz's next film, Abre
Los Ojos, caught the attention of director Cameron Crowe and film icon Tom
Cruise. Impressed by the script and the actress, the duo created an American
remake of the film: Vanilla Sky (2001). The movie helped make Cruz a
crossover success, and her ensuing relationship with co-star Tom Cruise put her
firmly in American headlines.

Cruz went on to
further prove she could hold her own among heavy-hitting actors in 2001, when
she starred opposite Johnny Depp in the film Blow. That same year, she
appeared in Captain Corelli's Mandolin; her performance earned her a
European Film Award nomination for best actress. Cruz's next film, Waking Up
in Reno (2002), featured her alongside Billy Bob Thornton and Patrick
Swayze. The romantic comedy about two couples headed to a Monster Truck show
received little box office attention.

In 2005, Cruz
appeared in Sahara, a comedic adventure film. Not long into filming, the
actress began a year-long relationship with her Sahara co-star, Matthew
McConaughey. The couple later split, reportedly citing conflicting film
schedules.

Returning to Spanish-language
filmes, Cruz appeared in Bandidas (2006) with friend and co-star Salma
Hayek. That same year, she starred in Volver, another Almodóvar film;
the director had held the role specifically for Cruz, and her performance
earned her an Academy Award nomination for best actress. A year later, Cruz won
her first Academy Award (best actress in a supporting role) for the Woody Allen
film Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008).

Cruz reunited with
Almodóvar a year later for the film Los Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces),
released in 2009. That same year, she had a supporting role in the musical Nine,
starring Daniel Day-Lewis as a famous Italian director. Cruz played Carla, the
director's mistress and only one of the many women in his life. The film,
adapted from the Broadway show, was directed by Rob Marshall and also featured
Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench and Sophia Loren.F or her portrayal of Carla in the
film, Cruz received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress.

Antonio Banderas

Antonio Banderas
was born on August 10, 1960, in Málaga, Spain. From 1982 to 1986, he acted
exclusively in films directed by Pedro Almodóvar. His success as an actor in
American came with his role in Philadelphia (1993). In 1994, Banderas
won a role in Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles. In
1997, he made The Mask of Zorro. He performed the voice of Puss in Boots
in the Shrek film series, and in the 2011 spin-off film, Puss in
Boots.

Actor José Antonio Domínguez Banderas was born on August 10, 1960, in
Málaga, Spain. Banderas studied drama, eventually moving to Madrid where he
performed in plays including Historia de los Tarantos and La hija del
aire. There, he met Pedro Almoóvar who gave him a small part in the film Laberinto
de pasiones (1982), and from then on he worked exclusively with Almodóvar
in such films as Matador (1985) and La ley del deseo (1986).

His first American
movie role was in The Mambo Kings (1992), and still speaking no English,
he was forced to learn his lines phonetically. To his credit, his performance
as a struggling musician was critically praised.

Early in the 1990s,
largely due to the international popularity of Almodóvar's films, he began a
film career in Hollywood. His real breakthrough to the mainstream American
audience came with starring in Philadelphia (1993). Banderas played the
gay lover of a lawyer with AIDS, played by Tom Hanks, with a sensitivity that
earned him much kudos. His star was shining brightly and the following year he
won a role in Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994)
with Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. His work as a star standing on equal ground with
other A-listers signified that Banderas had truly made the grade in Hollywood.

Banderas' next big
movie, Evita (1996) opposite Madonna, found the Spanish actor in a role
singing and dancing. The following year, Banderas starred in The Mask of
Zorro (1998), with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Anthony Hopkins. Along with his
work in front of the camera, Banderas has found success by using only his deep,
distinctive voice. He won new fans as Puss in Boots in the popular animated
film Shrek 2 (2004), which was folowed by the spin-off film Puss in
Boots (2011), featuring popular actors Salma Hayek and Zach Galifianakis.

Javier Bardem

Born on March 1,
1969, in the Canary Islands, Spain, Javier Bardem was born into an acting clan
and eventually embarked on a film career. He's worked with director Pedro
Almodóvar and earned Academy Award nominations for his roles in Before Night
Falls and Biutiful, winning for the chilling No Country for Old
Men. Additional projects have included Skyfall and Eat Pray Love.
Bardem wed actress Penelope Cruz in 2010.

Javier Encinas
Bardem was born on March 1, 1969, in Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain. Born
into a popular acting family—his mother, Pilar Bardem, has appeared in several
of her son's movies—Bardem built a considerable reputation among Spanish movie
audiences as the sexy star of such steamy films as Las Edades de Lulu (The
Ages of Lulu, 1990); Jamón, jamón (1992); and Huevos de oro (Golden
Balls, 1993)—all of which were directed by filmmaker Bigas Luna (Huevos
de oro also featured fellow up-and-coming Latino actor Benicio Del Toro).

Bardem expanded
into more dramatic roles in the mid-1990s, playing a drug addict in Días
contados (Numbered Days, 1994) and a police detective in El
Detective y la muerte (The Detective and Death, 1994). In 1995, he
showed considerable comedic talent when he spoofed his heartthrob image in Boca
a boca (Mouth to Mouth), playing a struggling young actor who gets a
job as a phone sex operator. The actor reteamed with celebrated Spanish
filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar—who had cast him in 1991's Tacones lejanos (High
Heels)—for 1997's Carne trémula (Live Flesh), also featuring
Spanish actress and Bardem's future wife, Penelope Cruz. In that film, Bardem
had the meaty role of a policeman paralyzed in a shooting accident who ends up
marrying the same woman his shooter is in love with.

Bardem made his
English-language debut in Perdita Durango (1997), playing Romeo, the
lover of the film's title character, portrayed by actress Rosie Perez. The film
made little impact on critics or audiences. In 1999, Bardem starred with
Spanish siren Victoria Abril in Entre las piernas (Between Your Legs).

Javier Bardem's
performance as Cuban writer and revolutionary Reinaldo Arenas, who committed
suicide in 1990, following a long struggle with AIDS, in Julian Schnabel's edgy
Before Night Falls (2000) earned Bardem the best reviews of his life—as
well as a place on the international radar screen. With several major
awards—including best actor honors from the National Board of Review and the
National Society of Film Critics—under his belt, Bardem became the first
Spanish actor to earn an Academy Award nomination.

Bardem went on to
tackle a prominent role in actor John Malkovich's directorial debut, The
Dancer Upstairs (2002). After a supporting role in the Tom Cruise-Jamie
Foxx thriller Collateral (2004), he starred as a quadriplegic fighting
for his right to die in The Sea Inside (2004), based on a true story.

In 2007, Bardem
appeared in two literary adaptations: Love in the Time of Cholera,
derived from the best-selling novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and No
Country for Old Men, adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same
name. While Love in the Time of Cholera received mixed reviews, Bardem
garnered wide praise for his performance as Anton Chigurh, a hitman who lives
by his own code, in No Country for Old Men. A modern Western of sorts
made by Ethan and Joel Coen, the dark film also stars Tommy Lee Jones (as the
sheriff who frustratingly but continually tries to solve the string of murders
that Chigurh leaves in his wake). One of the most striking physical features of
Chigurh was his haircut—which Bardem actually referenced at the 2008 Academy
Awards, in the acceptance speech that he delivered after receiving the Oscar
for best supporting actor. "Thank you to the Coens for being crazy enough
to think I could do that, and for putting one of the most horrible haircuts in
history over my head," Bardem told the audience.

Bardem starred with
Penelope Cruz again in Woody Allen's popular 2008 film, Vicky Cristina
Barcelona. He later played a leading role in the 2010 film Eat Pray Love.

Italy: Sophia Loren

Italian actress
Sophia Loren was born in Rome on September 20, 1934. Raised in poverty, she
began her film career in 1951 and came to be regarded as one of the worlds most
beautiful women. Loren won the Best Actress Academy Award for the film Two Women in 1961 and an Academy Honorary
Award in 1991. Married to producer Carlo Ponti for 50 years until his death in
2007, Loren lives in Geneva, Switzerland.

Actress Sofia
Villani Scicolone was born on September 20, 1934 in Rome, Italy. Her father,
Riccardo Scicolone, considered himself a "construction engineer," but
in fact he spent most of his time hanging around the fringes of show business,
hoping to romance young actresses. Sophia Loren's mother, Romilda Villani, was
one of them. Bearing an uncanny resemblance to Greta Garbo, Villani had once
been offered a trip to the United States to play Garbo's body double, but her
mother refused to let her go.

After Sophia
Loren's birth, her mother took her back to her hometown of Pozzuoli on the Bay
of Naples, which one travel book described as "perhaps the most squalid
city in Italy." Although Riccardo Scicolone fathered another child by
Villani, they never married. As Loren's mother put it, "That pig was free
to marry me, but instead he dumped me and married another woman."

Although she would
go on to be considered one of the most beautiful women in history, Sophia
Loren's wet nurse remembered her as "the ugliest child I ever saw in my
life." A quiet and reserved child, Loren grew up in extreme poverty, living
with her mother and many other relatives at her grandparents' home, where she
shared a bedroom with eight people. Things got worse when World War II ravaged
the already struggling city of Pozzuoli.

The resulting
famine was so great that Loren's mother occasionally had to siphon off a cup of
water from the car radiator to ration between her daughters by the spoonful.
During one aerial bombardment, Loren was knocked to the ground and split open
her chin, leaving a scar that has remained ever since.

Nicknamed
"little stick" by her classmates for her sickly physique, at the age
of 14 Loren blossomed, seemingly overnight, from a frail child into a beautiful
and voluptuous woman. "It became a pleasure just to stroll down the
street," she remembered of her sudden physical transformation. That same
year, Loren won second place in a beauty competition, receiving as her prize a
small sum of cash and free wallpaper for her grandparents' living room.

In 1950, when she
was 15 years old, Loren and her mother set off for Rome to try to make their
living as actresses. Loren landed her first role as an extra in the 1951 Mervyn
LeRoy film Quo Vadis. She also landed work as a model for various
fumetti, Italian publications that resemble comic books but with real
photographs instead of illustrations. After various bit parts and a small role
in the 1952 film La Favorita, the first for which she adopted the stage
name "Loren," she delivered her breakthrough performance as the title
character in the 1953 film Aida. Another leading role in The Gold of Naples
(1954) established Loren as one of the up-and-coming stars of Italian cinema.

In 1957, Loren
starred in her first Hollywood film, The Pride and the Passion, filmed
in Paris and costarring Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. At the same time, she
became enmeshed in a love triangle when both Grant and an Italian film producer
named Carlo Ponti declared their love for her. Although she had a schoolgirl's
crush on Grant, Loren ultimately chose Ponti, a man the media joked was twice
her age and half her height.

Even though they
married in 1957, complications regarding the annulment of Ponti's first
marriage prevented their union from being officially legally recognized in
Italy for another decade. Loren and Ponti's marriage nevertheless remains one
of the rare, heartwarming success stories among celebrity relationships. They
remained happily married for 50 years until Ponti's death in 2007. According to
Loren, the secret to their relationship was maintaining a low profile despite
their celebrity status. "Show business is what we do, not what we
are," she said.

In 1960, Sophia
Loren turned in the most acclaimed performance of her career in the Italian
World War II film Two Women. In a film with parallels to her own
childhood, Loren played a mother desperately trying to provide for her daughter
in war-ravaged Rome. The film transformed Loren into an international
celebrity, winning her the 1961 Academy Award for Best Lead Actress. She was
the first actress ever to win the award for a non-English-language film.

Throughout the
1960s, Loren continued to star in Italian, American and French films, cementing
her status as one of the great international movie stars of her generation. Her
most notable 1960s performances include Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (1963),
which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, Marriage, Italian Style (1964),
for which she earned another Oscar nomination for Best Actress, and A
Countess from Hong Kong (1967), costarring Marlon Brando.

Mastroianni
was born in Fontana Liri, a small village in the Apennines in the province of Frosinone, Lazio, and grew up in Turin and Rome. He was the son of
Ida (née Irolle) and Ottone Mastroianni, who ran a carpentry shop, and the
nephew of the Italian sculptor Umberto Mastroianni (1910–1998). During World
War II, after the division into Axis and Allied Italy, he was interned in a
loosely guarded German prison camp, from which he escaped to hide in Venice.

Mastroianni
made his onscreen debut as an uncredited extra in Marionette
(1939) when he was fourteen, and his first big role was in Atto
d'accusa (1951). Within a decade he became a major international
celebrity, starring in Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958);
and in Federico Fellini's La
Dolce Vita opposite Anita Ekberg in 1960, where he played a disillusioned
and self-loathing tabloid columnist who spends his days and nights exploring
Rome's high society. Mastroianni followed La Dolce Vita with another
signature role, that of a film director who, amidst self-doubt and troubled
love affairs, finds himself in a creative block while making a movie in
Fellini's 8½
(1963).

Vitti's
first film role was in Edoardo Anton's Ridere Ridere Ridere (1954)
but her first widely noted performance was at the age of 26, in Mario
Amendola's Le dritte (1958). In 1957 she joined Michelangelo Antonioni'sTeatro Nuovo di
Milano and later played a leading role in his internationally praised and
award winning film L'avventura (1960) as a detached and cool
protagonist drifting into a relationship with the lover of her missing
girlfriend. Giving a screen presence which has been described as
"stunning" she is also credited with helping Antonioni raise money
for the production and sticking with him through daunting location shooting. L'avventura
made Vitti an international star and one of Italy's most famous actresses of
the 20th century. Her image later appeared on an Italian postage stamp
commemorating the film.

Vitti
received critical praise for starring roles in the Antonioni films La Notte
(Night, 1961), L'Eclisse (Eclipse, 1962) and Deserto
Rosso (Red Desert, 1964), which are often cited with L'avventura
as a series. After her relationship with Antonioni ended, the two did not work
together again until Il mistero di Oberwald (1980).

Throughout
the later 1970s and early 1980s Vitti appeared mostly in Italian films which
did not gain international distribution. Even though Il mistero di Oberwald is noted for the
last collaboration between Vitti and Antonioni, it is not as well known as L'Avventura.
After this movie was made, Vitti did not do as much screen work. In 1989
however, Vitti tried writing and directing and created Scandalo
Segreto, which she also starred in. The film was not a success and she
then retired from cinema.

By
1986 Vitti had returned to the theatre as an actress and teacher. During the
1990s she did television work, acting and directing. In 1993 Vitti was awarded
the Festival Tribute at the Créteil International Women's Film Festival, in France.

Poland: Danuta Szaflarska

Danuta Szaflarska (born February 6, 1915) is a Polish screen and
stage actress. In 2008 she was awarded the Złota Kaczka for the best Polish
actress of the century. Szaflarska participated in the Warsaw
Uprising as a liaison. Szaflarska was awarded the Order of Polonia Restituta, Commander's
Cross and Commander's Cross with Star, one of Poland's highest Orders and Gold Medal of Gloria Artis
(2007).

Szaflarska
was born in Kosarzyska, Piwniczna-Zdrój,
Poland. She married her
first husband, Jan Ekier, a pianist, in 1942. They had one daughter,
Maria. The pair divorced. Her second husband, Janusz Kilański, was a radio
announcer. He is father of Szaflarska's second daughter, Agnieszka. Kilański
and Szaflarska also divorced. Szaflarska turned 100
in February 2015.[3] She is a regular employee of Teatr
Rozmaitości in Warsaw,
specializing in modern and progressive drama, and currently appears in 4
different plays at the theatre.

In the
late 1980s, Scorupco travelled throughout Europe
working as a model, and appeared on the cover of Vogue.
In 1987, she was discovered by director Staffan Hildebrand and starred in the
film Ingen kan
älska som vi ("Nobody can love like us"). In the early 1990s, she
had a brief but successful career as a pop singer, releasing the album IZA,
which was certified
gold in Sweden
in 1991. In 1995, she played Natalya
Simonova in the James Bond film GoldenEye,
starring opposite Pierce Brosnan.

On
December 25, 1996, Scorupco married Polish ice hockey
player Mariusz Czerkawski, then a player for the Edmonton
Oilers. They separated in 1998, having had one daughter together, Julia
(born September 15, 1997).On January 30, 2003, Scorupco married an American, Jeffrey Raymond; they
have a son, Jakob (born July 24, 2003), and now live in Los Angeles
and New
York City.

In
2011, Scorupco reprised her singing career, duetting with Swedish musician Peter
Jöback in his single Jag Har Dig Nu and featuring in the song's
music video. She also starred in Jöback's short extension film La vie,
L'amour, Le mort. Scorupco went on to host the spring 2012 series of Sweden's Next Top Model but did not continue
it for a second series.

Scorupco
moved into the comedy world in July 2013 when she was named to a lead role in a
new Swedish romantic comedy, Micke & Veronica, alongside David
Hellenius. It premiered on December 25, 2014.

Since
his early childhood he knew he wanted to become an actor. He attended the
Machulski youth theatre group in Warsaw.
Thanks to an international scholarship, he was able toattend international
theatre workshops in the UK
and Germany.
He continued his acting education by attending the Theatre Academy in Warsaw.
During his second academic year, he won a scholarship from the Soros
Foundation which allowed him to attend the British American Drama Academy for
one year, where he performed Hamlet for his diploma.

Once
he graduated from the Theatre Academy, he was hired by the Teatr Współczesny in Warsaw. His career in the
film industry however grew much more intensively. His role of Stawrogin in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed started Piotr’s long
list of roles. The breakthrough in his career was his part as Frédéric Chopin in the film "Chopin - Desire
of Love" - with this role he joined the club of Polish stars.

The
climax of his popularity was reached when he played the title role of another
Polish historical figure in a two part Italian movie - "Karol the Man who
became Pope" and "Karol: The Pope-The Man". The movie was viewed
by several dozen million viewers, and made him popular in Italy, Latin
America and many other Catholic countries.

Piotr
also managed to take advantage of his popularity abroad to play at the Sala Uno
Theatre in Rome,
in Italian. He also played in Liliana
Cavani’s movie "Einstein" and in the Portuguese production
"Second Life".

He has
been in over 800 radio roles and around 100 theatre, television and film parts.
He is also appreciated for his dubbing roles. In animated films he played,
among others, the giraffe in "Madagascar", Zigzag McQueen in
"Cars" and Syndrome in "The Incredibles".

He has
received many prestigious awards in Poland. In 2011 he was awarded the
most popular Polish actor once again.

He is
a fun of leading Polish political party. In 2010 he was in presidential
committee

When Ruah was five years old, her father
completed his residency and the family returned to Portugal, where her parents
divorced and she attended an international, English-medium school.

Ruah started acting in Portuguese soap operas
when she was a teen. Her first acting role came at the age of 16, when she
auditioned for the soap opera Jardins Proibidos ("Forbidden Gardens")
and won the role of Sara. Ruah kept working on diverse projects while she was
finishing high school. At the age of 18, she moved to London
to study at the London
Metropolitan University,
where she earned a First in Performing Arts. She got extremely good grades
while in school, and became the best well known movie and sports star. Ruah
returned to Portugal
to pursue her acting career. She was the winner of the celebrity dancing competition
Dança Comigo (the Portuguese version of Dancing with the Stars) and got main
roles in television series, short films, and theatre. In 2007, she moved to New York to study at the
Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.

Ruah stars as Special Agent Kensi Blye in NCIS:
Los Angeles,
which first aired on September 22, 2009. Season 2 aired on September 21, 2010,
and airs Tuesdays at 9:00 pm on CBS, following NCIS at 8:00 p.m. Season 3 aired
on September 20, 2011. She later portrayed the character in a guest appearance
on the series Hawaii
Five-0.

In April 2013 Ruah made her debut at
Hayworth Theatre in LA as Catherine in "Proof", a play by David
Auburn.

Diogo Morgado

Diogo Miguel Morgado Soares is a famous Portuguese actor. He was born in Lisbon on 17th January 1981.

Morgado began his career at age fourteen as a
model. His first television work was in Portuguese telenovelas and TV series
such as Terra Mãe (1998), Diário de Maria (1998), A Lenda da Garça (2000) and A
Febre do Ouro Negro (2000), Laços de sangue 2010, Morangos com açucar 2009 His
name came into the limelight with his role as Miguel in the SIC produced TV
film Amo-te Teresa (2000). He was later featured in the teen telenovela
Floribella (2006), had a starring role in Vingança (2007), starred as the
protagonist in the mini-series A Vida Privada de Salazar (2009), featured in
Lua Vermelha (2010) and starred in the Emmy Award winning Laços de Sangue
(2010).[2] Morgado had his first role outside of Portugal in the Brazilian
telenovela Revelação (2008) and also appeared alongside Rui Unas in the Spanish
comedy Mapa (2009).

He is best known for his portrayal of Jesus
Christ in History Channel's Emmy-nominated miniseries, The Bible, which was the
highest rated cable show of 2013, and in 20th Century Fox's feature film Son of
God, released on February 28, 2014. He also recently appeared in the 3rd season
premiere of the hit ABC drama, Revenge as Dr. Jorge Velez in a recurring guest
star role.[3] He also showcased his comedic ability in "O Crime do Padre
Amaro," which received international attention from directors all over the
world. Diogo is also a passionate theater actor and had lead roles in
prestigious plays such as David Hare's "Skylight" and Peter Shaffer's
"The Royal Hunt to the Sun."

Beyond Portugal,
He has had lead roles in a few international films like Spain's "Dos Rivales Casi Iguales" and
"Star Crossed," and Brazil's
"Revelação" and "The Jungle". Diogo has also wrapped
leading roles in two independent films in the U.S, – the gritty urban drama
"Red Butterfly" and the action-filled adrenaline film "Born to
Race: Fast Track." Diogo currently can be seen on Portuguese television,
as "Eduardo" in the series "Sol de Inverno." His most
recent lead film role was as Antonio Vega Jr. in the 2013 Hollywood
production Red Butterfly.

Joaquim de Almeida

Joaquim António Portugal Baptista de Almeida,
was born in Lisbon,
on 15th March 1957, and he’s a Portuguese-American actor.

He started his film career appearing
on the 1982 action film The Soldier, and later achieved recognition for playing
Andrea Bonanno in the 1987 Italian film Good Morning, Babylon. He achieved international fame with
his portrayals of Félix Cortez in the 1994 thriller Clear and Present Danger
and Bucho in the 1995 action thriller Desperado. Several years later, he became
popular for playing Ramon Salazar on the Fox thriller drama series 24, between
2003 and 2004, and Hernan Reyes in 2011 street racing film Fast Five.

Being
fluent in several languages, Almeida has worked in several countries in Europe
and the Americas,
in many film and stage productions, winning some international awards in films
like Retrato de Família, Adão e Eva and O Xangô de Baker Street. His other
well-known films include The Honorary Consul (1983), Only You (1994), La
Cucaracha (1998), One Man's Hero (1999), Behind Enemy Lines (2001), Whore
(2004), The Death and Life of Bobby Z (2007), Che: Part Two (2008) and The
Burning Plain (2008).

Maria de Medeiros

Maria de Saint-Maurice Esteves de Medeiros
Victorino de Almeida was born in Lisbon,
on 19th August 1965, is a Portuguese actress, director, and singer who has been
involved in both European and American film productions.

Maria
de Medeiros was born in Lisbon,
Portugal, the
daughter of musician and composer António Victorino de Almeida. She played her
first part on screen at the age of 15. At the age of 18, she moved to France to
pursue her acting studies and was a student at the CNSAD. Medeiros speaks
French fluently without an accent and has acted extensively on stage and on
screen in French productions. She also acts in Spanish, German, and Italian
productions. In 2008, Medeiros was nominated for the UNESCO Artist for Peace.

Among Medeiros' most memorable film appearances
are three early 1990s roles. Her considerable resemblance to Anaïs Nin landed
her the primary role in Henry & June (1990), in which she played the
author. In 1990, she played the role of Maria in Ken McMullen's film about the
rise of the Paris Commune, 1871. In 1994, Medeiros appeared in Quentin
Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, playing Butch Coolidge's (Bruce Willis) girlfriend,
Fabienne.

In 2000, Medeiros directed the film April
Captains (in which she also had a small role) about the 1974 Carnation
Revolution in Portugal.
The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2000 Cannes Film
Festival.[1]

In 2003, Medeiros appeared as a hairdresser in
the movie My Life Without Me starring Sarah Polley. She has starred in the
Canadian movie The Saddest Music in the World (2004) directed by Guy Maddin and
co-starring Isabella Rossellini and Mark McKinney.

Turkey:Halit Ergenç

Halit Ergenç, born 30 April 1970 in İstanbul, Turkey, is a Turkish actor.

Halit
Ergenç was born as the son of Yeşilçam-era actor Sait Ergenç on 30 April 1970 in
İstanbul. He completed his secondary education at Beşiktaş
Atatürk High
School in 1989 and entered İstanbul Technical University to
study Marine Engineering.[1] He left after one year to study opera at Mimar Sinan University and supported himself
working as a computer operator and marketer. He briefly worked as a backing
vocalist and dancer for Ajda Pekkan and Leman Sam.

Songül Öden (born February 17, 1977) is a Turkish actress. Her first name literally means "the last
rose," and thus she is known as "the rose of Turkey" due also to her soft
and feminine physical features.

In 2005, She landed the title role in the series "Gümüş"
("Silver") where she acted side by side with Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ. The series lasted for 2 and a half
years.

Gümüş, also known by its Arabic title "Noor", became an obsession for
many Arabs and it is believed that 85 million viewers watched the translated
Turkish sudser throughout the Arab World when it aired in 2008 by MBC.

Gümüş was adored by Bulgarian viewers when it
was broadcast in Bulgarian as "Перла" in 2009. The Bulgarian private
TV channel bTV recently aired the show dubbed into Bulgarian with the title
"Perla" ("Pearl").
Songül was invited to visit Bulgaria
to meet her fans and for interviews with some Bulgarian programs.

Her
other series Vazgeç Gönlüm ("Abandoned Heart"), in which she
played the leading role "Ezra" in the second season was made in late
summer/fall of 2008.

"Acı
Aşk" ("Bitter Love") her film which she co-stars with Halit
Ergenç, Cansu
Dere and Ezgi Asaroğlu is her first-ever cinematic performance
was released on December 18, 2009.

On 19
November 2011, due to the popularity of her series Gümüş, she was
invited to host Kënga Magjike 2011 Final in Albania alongside
Ardit
Gjebrea.

Afife Jale

Afife Jale (1902 – July 24, 1941) was a Turkish stage actress, best known as the first Muslim theatre
actress in Turkey.

She
was born 1902 as Afife in Istanbul to Hidayet and his wife Methiye. She had a sister
Behiye and a brother Salâh.

Afife
was studying at the Girls Industry School
in Istanbul;
however, she wanted to be an actress. In the Ottoman
Empire, Muslim Turkish women were not allowed to play on stage by a decree
of the Ministry of the Interior. Only non-Muslim women of Greek,
Armenian, or Jewish
minorities were eligible for being cast.

Afife's
father was against a theatre career of her because he considered it unsound.
For this reason, she ran away from her parent's house. She entered as a trainee
the theatre of the newly established city conservatory (Ottoman Turkish: Darülbedayi). The Conservatory
had opened up a course to train Muslim women actresses with the rationale to
play for women audience only.

Afife
debuted on stage in 1920, acting as "Emel" in the theatre play "Yamalar"
written by Hüseyin Suat. The role had become vacant as the Armenian Eliza
Binemeciyan had gone abroad. She took the stage name Jale for this play, and
was called from then on as Afife Jale. Performing at "Apollon
Theatre" in Kadıköy, Afife Jale became the first ever Muslim Turkish
stage actress in the country. She had to be hidden at least twice by her
non-Muslim co-actors during police raids in the middle of the play. The
management of the conservatory was warned of the restriction that led to her
discharge from the theatre in 1921. She then played in some other theatre
companies under various stage names.

She
found herself in financial trouble, and began suffering acute headache. She became
addicted to morphine
after her doctor applied a morphine based therapy to her.

In
1923, Mustafa Kemal, the founder of the newly
proclaimed Republic, lifted the Ottoman-era ban on stage acting by Muslim
women. This led to the end of Afife's fears. She joined the theatre again, and
toured in Anatolia.
However, her drug addiction caused the worsening of her health that ultimately
led to her retirement from the theatre.

Afife
Jale became impoverished after leaving her acting career. In 1928, she met Selahattin Pınar
(1902–1960), a tambur virtuoso, at a Turkish classical music concert she
attended. The couple married in 1929, and moved to an apartment in Fatih district of Istanbul. The
marriage life did not go well, and the couple divorced in 1935 when Afife's
morphine addiction affected their marriage negatively. Selahattin Pınar
composed a number of musical pieces, which later became classical, referring to
his relationship with her wife during their marriage.

Concerned
about her substance dependence, Jale's friends from the conservatory took her
to the Bakırköy Psychiatric Hospital for
therapy. She spent her last years in the hospital, where she died on July 24,
1941. Her burial place was forgotten.

In
1987, journalist Nezihe Araz (1922–2009) wrote a
theatre play titled "Afife Jale", which was played on stage
and turned into a film.

Afife
Jale's tragic life was depicted twice in the cinema, first in the 1987 movie Afife
Jale directed by Şahin Kaygun, and later in Ceyda Aslı Kılıçkıran's 2008
movie Kilit, with Müjde Ar starring in both.

Pellea
played numerous comic and serious roles. In the cinema was most noted for his
roles as historical leaders. His earliest leading roles were as Romanian
national heroes, beginning with Decebalus in
Dacii
(1967) and Columna (1968). He also portrayed Michael
the Brave in Mihai Viteazul (1971).

His
most famous comic role was as "Nea Mărin" (Uncle Marin), a character
representing the archetypal Oltenian peasant. Mărin first appeared in TV comedy sketches.
The character graduated to the cinema in Nea Mărin miliardar (Uncle Marin,
the Billionaire), in which Pellea played the dual role of the naive Marin and
the American billionaire he is mistaken for. Nea Mărin miliardar is
ranked 1 in the top most viewed Romanian films of all time.

He
played other historical figures such as Vladică Hariton in Tudor din
Vladimiri and Voivode Basarab in Croitorii cei mari din Valahia. He
also appeared in Răscoala and Haiducii. In 1977 he won the award
for Best Actor at the 10th Moscow International Film
Festival for his role in The Doom.

In a
2006 poll conducted by Romanian Television to identify the
"greatest Romanians of all time", Pellea came in 60th.

Born
in Bucharest,
in a Jewish family,
she graduated from the Film and Theatre Academy of Bucharest in 1985. She then
played at Teatrul Tineretului (Youth Theater) in Piatra
Neamţ until 1988, and at the Teatrul Evreiesc de Stat (State Jewish
Theatre) in Bucharest
1988-1990. From 1990–1998 she was a member of the company of the National Theatre in Bucharest, and since
1998 of Teatrul Bulandra, also in Bucharest; in addition,
she continues to act at the Jewish State Theatre and other Bucharest theaters
and elsewhere in Romania. Among her notable stage roles in recent years, in a Romanian-language
production of The Blue Angel (Îngerul Albastru in Romanian) at Bucharest's Odeon
Theater, in 2001-2 she played, to great critical acclaim, Lola Lola, the
character made famous by Marlene Dietrich. At the same time, she was also
playing the role of Kathleen Hogan in a Romanian-language production of Israel
Horovitz's Park Your Car in
Harvard Yard at the State Jewish Theater.

Morgenstern
has appeared in numerous films, primarily in Romanian
language roles. In The Passion of the Christ, she performs a role in Aramaic, but like
the other actors in the cast of that film, she simply memorized her lines phonetically.

Her
surname, Morgenstern, means "Morning Star" in German, a title
of the Virgin Mary, the character she played in The Passion of the
Christ. Mel Gibson, a devout Traditionalist Catholic, thought this of
great significance when casting her. In interviews, she has defended The
Passion against allegations of antisemitism,
saying that the high priest Caiaphas is portrayed not as a representative of the Jewish
people, but as a leader of the establishment, adding that "Authorities
throughout history have persecuted individuals with revolutionary ideas."

In 2007
Iureş volunteered his help in the Verde 003 project, which aims to build a
better environment for all Romanians by planting vegetation.

He
made his stage debut at the Bulandra
Theatre, Romania, in the 1975 production of Ferma, playing George.
From 1978 to 1981 he acted at the National Theatre, Cluj, in numerous roles
such as Beckman in the play Afară în faţa uşii and Conifeul in Persii.
During the early 1980s, Iureş appeared at both the Bulandra and Odeon Theatres in Bucharest. Among his roles were the title
roles in Shakespeare's
were Hamlet,
Henry IV and Richard III.

He is
the president of Teatrul ACT (the first
independent theatre in Romania) of which he was one of the founders in 1995. Iureş
has starred there in various roles, including the title roles of Shakespeare's Richard
II, Richard III (directed by Mihai Măniuţiu), and Hamlet (directed by Liviu
Ciulei). He has also appeared in Fundaţia Teatrul ACT-staged shows such as Creatorul
de Teatru (The Creator of the Theatre, directed by Alexandru Dabija), Cetatea
Soarelui (Citadel of the Sun, directed by Mihai Măniuţiu), and Samuel
Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape. Iureş also continues to
perform with the Bulandra Theatre, for whom he played the lead in a 2005
production of Luigi Pirandello's Henry IV.

Iureş
has received many accolades and nominations (in both Romania and abroad) throughout his
career.

Iureş
made his film debut portraying Franz Liszt
in the 1978 Romanian film Vis de ianuarie (January
Dream). From the early 1980s and into the '90s, Iureş continued to build a
screen career, appearing in many minor and major roles in Romania.

Almodóvar is a
successful and internationally known filmmaker. His films, marked by complex
narratives, employ the codes of melodrama and use elements of pop culture, popular songs,
irreverent humor, strong colors and glossy décor. Desire, passion, family and
identity are among Almodóvar’s most prevalent themes. His films enjoy a
worldwide following and he has become a major figure on the stage of world
cinema.

Asked to explain
the success of his films, he says that they are very entertaining. "It's
important not to forget that films are made to entertain. That's the key."
He was heavily influenced by old Hollywood movies in which everything happens
around a female main character, and aims to continue in that tradition. He acknowledges, however, that his films are
also very personal-"My films are very Spanish, but on the other hand they
are capriciously personal. You cannot measure Spain by my films." In 2013,
he was honoured for his European achievement to world cinema at the 26th European Film Awards.

¿Qué he hecho yo para
merecer esto?(1984)

Almodóvar's next film, What Have I Done to Deserve
This? (¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto?) was inspired by the
Spanish black
comedies of the late 50s and early 60s. It is the tale of a struggling
housewife named Gloria and her dysfunctional family: her abusive
husband, who works as a taxi driver; her oldest son, a drug dealer; the
youngest son, who sells his body to the local perverts; and the grandmother who
hates the city and just wants to return to her rural village.

The theme of the downtrodden housewife coping with the travails of everyday
life arises repeatedly in the director's work, as do other issues of female
independence and solidarity. What Have I Done to Deserve This? is also a
critique on consumerism and patriarchal culture. In one scene, the housewife trades
her own son so she doesn't have to pay a dentist bill, and in another the only
witness of a crime is a lizard, aptly named “Money.”

What Have I Done to Deserve This? was more successful than Almodóvar’s
previous films and became his first with international distribution.

Matador
(1986)

Almodóvar's subsequent films deepened his exploration of sexual desire and
the sometimes brutal laws governing it. Matador
is a dark, complex story that centers on the relationship between a former
bullfighter and a murderous female lawyer, both of whom can only experience
sexual fulfillment in conjunction with killing. The film offered up desire as a
bridge between sexual attraction and death.

Written together with Spanish novelist Jesús
Ferrero, Matador drew away from the naturalism and humor of the director’s
previous work into a deeper and darker terrain. Almodóvar established the
interrelation between sexuality and violence as seen in his cinematographic
quotation of the final sequence from King Vidor’s
Duel in the Sun. The violent elements of
the film caused some controversy. Almodóvar justified his use of violence
explaining "The moral of all my films is to get to a stage of greater
freedom." Almodóvar went on to note, "I have my own morality. And so
do my films. If you see Matador through the perspective of traditional
morality, it's a dangerous film because it's just a celebration of killing.
Matador is like a legend. I don't try to be realistic; it's very abstract, so
you don't feel identification with the things that are happening, but with the
sensibility of this kind of romanticism".

Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (1988)

Almodóvar’s next film was his first huge international success: Women on the Verge of a
Nervous Breakdown (Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios), a
feminist light comedy that further established Almodóvar as a "women's
director" like George Cukor and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Almodóvar has
said that women make better characters: “women are more spectacular as dramatic
subjects, they have a greater range of registers, etc.”

The film, staged as a faux adaptation of a theatrical work, details a
two-day period in the life of Pepa (Carmen
Maura), a professional movie dubber who has been abruptly abandoned by her
married lover and who frantically tries to track him down. In the course of her
search she discovers some of his secrets, and realizes her true feelings.

Inspired by Hollywood comedies of the
1950s, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown became the stepping
stone for Pedro Almodóvar's later work. This light comedy of rapid-fire
dialogue and fast-paced action remains one of Almodóvar’s most accessible
films. The film received public and critical acclaim worldwide, and brought
Almodóvar to the attention of American audiences. Women was showered
with many awards, and received an Oscar nomination for best foreign language
film.

¡Átame!
(1990)

Almodóvar's next film marked the breaking-off with his reference actress, Carmen
Maura, and the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with another great
actress of Spanish and European cinema: Victoria
Abril. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (¡Átame!)
was also the director's fifth and most important collaboration with Antonio
Banderas.

In Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Ricky (played by Antonio
Banderas), a recently released psychiatric patient, kidnaps and holds
hostage an actress (played by Victoria
Abril) in order to make her fall in love with him. “I’m 23 years old, I
have fifty thousand pesetas and I am alone in the world. I will try to be a
good husband for you and a good father for your children,” he tells her.

Rather than populate the film with many characters, as in his previous
films, here the story focuses on the compelling relationship at its center: the
actress and her kidnapper literally struggling for power and desperate for
love. The film’s title line ¡Tie Me Up! is unexpectedly uttered by the
actress as a genuine request. She does not know if she will try to escape or
not, and when she realizes she has feelings for her captor, she prefers not to
be given a chance.

La flor de mi secreto
(1995)

Almodóvar changed gears with his next effort, 1995's The Flower of My Secret (La flor de
mi secreto). It is an exploration of denial in its various forms, a film in
which melodrama is treated more as theme rather than as plot line. The
Flower of My Secret is the story of Leo Macias, a successful romance writer
who has to confront both a professional and personal crisis. Estranged from her
husband, a military officer who has volunteered for an international
peacekeeping role in Bosnia and Herzegovina to avoid her, Leo
fights to hold on to a past that has already eluded her, not realizing she has
already set her future path by her own creativity and by supporting the
creative efforts of others.

Starring Almodóvar regular Marisa
Paredes, this psychological drama was hailed as his most mature film to
date, and remains one of the director's humblest films. Leaving Almodóvar's
usual choral exercises aside, the story centered on the love-torn writer. The
Flower of My Secret has many common elements with All About My Mother and Talk to Her.
The three films are about “loss, growth and recovery”.

The Flower of my Secret heralded a change in Almodóvar's filmography to a
more mature period. It is the transitional film between his earlier and later
style. It is worth noting, however, that many leading critics did not respond
well to this film.

Todo sobre mi madre (1999)

Almodóvar then continued to work in more serious dramatic confines,
directing All About My Mother (Todo sobre mi madre).
The film grew out of a brief scene in The Flower of My Secret, telling
the story of a mourning mother who, after reading the last entry in her dead
son's journal about how he wishes to meet his father for the first time,
decides to travel to Barcelona in search of the boy's father. She must tell the
father that she had their son after she left him many years ago, and that he
has now died. Once there, she encounters a number of odd characters - a transsexual
prostitute, a pregnant
nun, and a lesbian
actress - all of whom help her cope with her grief.

The comic
relief on the film centers on Agrado, a pre-operative transsexual.
In one scene, she tells the story of her body and its relationship to plastic
surgery and silicone,
culminating with a statement of her own philosophy: “The more you become like
what you have dreamed for yourself, the more authentic you are”.

All About My Mother received more awards and honors than any other
film in the Spanish motion picture industry. Its recognition includes an Academy
Award for Best Foreign Language Film, a Golden
Globe in the same category, Best Director Award and
the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury Award at Cannes; the French Cesar for Best Foreign
Film, the Goya
Award as best film of the year, best Actress in a Leading Role for
Argentine actress Cecilia Roth and a twelfth Annual European Film Award.

In 2004, Almodóvar followed with Bad Education, a richly baroque tale of child sexual abuse and mixed identities,
starring Gael García Bernal and Fele
Martínez. In the drama film, two children, Ignacio and Enrique, discover
love, cinema and fear in a religious school at the start of the 1960s. Bad
Education has a complex structure that not only uses film within a film, but also stories that open
up into other stories, real and imagined to narrate the same story: A tale of
child molestation and its aftermath of faithlessness, creativity, despair,
blackmail and murder. Sexual abuse by Catholic
priests, transsexuality, drug use, and a metafiction
are also important themes and devices in the plot. Almodóvar used elements of film noir,
borrowing in particular from Double Indemnity. The film's
protagonist, Juan (Gael Garcia Bernal), was modeled largely on Patricia Highsmith’s most famous character, Tom Ripley,
as played by Alain Delon in René
Clément's Purple Noon. A criminal without scruples, but with
an adorable face that betrays nothing of his true nature. Almodóvar
explains : "He also represents a classic film noir character - the
femme fatale. Which means that when other characters come into contact with
him, he embodies fate, in the most tragic and noir sense of the word."
Almodóvar worked over ten years on the screenplay for the film, which received
the honor of opening in the 57th Cannes Film Festival in 2004, the
first Spanish film to do so.

Volver
(2006)

Volver (Return),
a mixture of comedy, family drama and ghost story, is set in part in La Mancha
(the director's native region). The film opens showing dozens of women
furiously scrubbing the graves of their deceased, establishing the influence of
the dead over the living as a key theme. The plot follows the story of three generations
of women in the same family who survive wind, fire, and even death. The film is
an ode to female resilience, where men are literally
disposable.

Many of Almodóvar's stylistic hallmarks are present: the stand-alone song
(a rendition of the Argentinian tango
song "Volver"), references to reality TV,
and an homage to classic film (in this case Luchino
Visconti's Bellissima).

Volver started as a story of la España negra, or 'black Spain' - the
rural, superstitious and conservative part of the country still often associated,
the director says, with violence, tragedy, even backwardness: "It looks
like they are living a century before. But I tried to demonstrate that the same
Spain, in the same local
places with the same local characters, could be called 'white Spain', because
the neighbors are in complete solidarity, all the women join together and
create a kind of family. The movie really talks about women who survive, women
who fight fiercely.

The storyline of Volver appears as both a novel and movie script in Almodóvar's
earlier film, The Flower of My Secret. The film reunited Almodóvar with
Carmen Maura, who had appeared in several of his early films.

Los Abrazos Rotos
(2009)

Almodóvar’s next film Broken
Embraces (2009), a romantic thriller film starring Lluís Homar, José Luis Gómez as well as Volver stars Cruz
and Portillo, became the director’s longest and most expensive feature. A
four-way tale of dangerous love, it was shot in the style of a hard-boiled
1950s American film noir or its descendant, the neo-noir genre.
The plot follows the tragic fate of a former film director, who was blinded in
a car accident fourteen years before. The film has a fractured puzzling
structure, mixing past and present and film within a film that Almodóvar
explored previously in both Talk to Her
and Bad Education. Broken Embraces was
accepted into the main selection at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival in competition
for the prestigious Palme d'Or, his third film to do so and fourth to screen at
the festival. It was nominated for the 2010 Golden Globe Award
for Best Foreign Language Film, Almodóvar's sixth film to be nominated in
this category and was nominated for the Satellite Award for Best
Foreign Language Film.

Italy: Federico
Fellini

Federico Fellini, January 20, 1920 – October 31, 1993, was an Italianfilm
director and scriptwriter. Known for his distinct style that blends
fantasy and baroque
images, he is considered one of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th
century, and is widely revered. He won five Academy
Awards including the most number of Oscars in history for Best Foreign Language Film.Fellini was born to middle-class parents in Rimini, then a
small town on the Adriatic Sea. His father, Urbano Fellini (1894–1956),
born to a family of Romagnol peasants and small landholders from Gambettola,
moved to Rome in
1915 as a baker apprenticed to the Pantanella pasta factory. His mother,
Ida Barbiani (1896–1984), came from a bourgeois Catholic
family of Roman merchants. Despite her family’s vehement disapproval, she had
eloped with Urbano in 1917 to live at his parents' home in Gambettola. A civil
marriage followed in 1918 with the religious ceremony held at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome
a year later.Enrolled at the Ginnasio Giulio Cesare in 1929, he made friends
with Luigi ‘Titta’ Benzi, later a prominent Rimini lawyer. In Mussolini’s
Italy,
Fellini and Riccardo became members of the Avanguardista, the compulsory
Fascist
youth group for males. He visited Rome
with his parents for the first time in 1933, the year of the maiden voyage of
the transatlantic ocean liner SS Rex (which is shown in Amarcord). The sea
creature found on the beach at the end of La
Dolce Vita (1960) has its basis in a giant fish marooned on a Rimini beach during a
storm in 1934.

Although
Fellini adapted key events from his childhood and adolescence in films such as I Vitelloni
(1953), 8½
(1963), and Amarcord
(1973), he insisted that such autobiographical memories were inventions: "It
is not memory that dominates my films. To say that my films are
autobiographical is an overly facile liquidation, a hasty classification. It
seems to me that I have invented almost everything: childhood, character,
nostalgias, dreams, memories, for the pleasure of being able to recount
them."

In
1937, Fellini opened Febo, a portrait shop in Rimini with the painter Demos Bonini. His
first humorous article appeared in the "Postcards to Our Readers"
section of Milan’s
Domenica del Corriere. Deciding on a career as a caricaturist and gag
writer, Fellini travelled to Florence in 1938, where he published his first cartoon in
the weekly 420. Failing his military culture exam, he graduated from
high school in July 1938 after doubling the exam.

Rome
(1939) - In September 1939, he enrolled in law school at
the University of Rome to please his
parents. Biographer Hollis Alpert reports that "there is no record
of his ever having attended a class". Installed in a family pensione, he
met another lifelong friend, the painter Rinaldo Geleng. Desperately poor, they
unsuccessfully joined forces to draw sketches of restaurant and café patrons.
Fellini eventually found work as a cub reporter on the dailies Il Piccolo
and Il Popolo di Roma but quit after a short stint, bored by the local
court news assignments.

Four
months after publishing his first article in Marc’Aurelio, the highly
influential biweekly humour magazine, he joined the editorial board, achieving
success with a regular column titled Will You Listen to What I Have to Say?. Described as “the determining moment in Fellini’s life”, the magazine
gave him steady employment between 1939 and 1942, when he interacted with
writers, gagmen, and scriptwriters. These encounters eventually led to
opportunities in show business and cinema. Among his collaborators on the
magazine’s editorial board were the future director Ettore
Scola, Marxist
theorist and scriptwriter Cesare
Zavattini, and Bernardino Zapponi, a future Fellini
screenwriter. Conducting interviews for CineMagazzino also proved
congenial: when asked to interview Aldo
Fabrizi, Italy’s most
popular variety performer, he established such immediate personal rapport with
the man that they collaborated professionally. Specializing in humorous
monologues, Fabrizi commissioned material from his young protégé.Career and later life -Early screenplays (1940–1943) Retained
on business in Rimini, Urbano sent wife and
family to Rome
in 1940 to share an apartment with his son. Fellini and Ruggero Maccari, also
on the staff of Marc’Aurelio, began writing radio sketches and gags for
films.

Writing
for radio while attempting to avoid the draft, Fellini met his future wife Giulietta
Masina in a studio office at the Italian public radio broadcaster EIAR in autumn 1942.
Well-paid as the voice of Pallina in Fellini's radio serial, Cico and
Pallina, Masina was also well-known for her musical-comedy broadcasts which
cheered an audience depressed by the war. In November 1942, Fellini was sent to Libya, occupied by
Fascist Italy, to work on the screenplay of I cavalieri del deserto (Knights of the Desert,
1942), directed by Osvaldo Valenti and Gino Talamo. Fellini welcomed
the assignment as it allowed him "to secure another extension on his draft
order". Responsible for emergency re-writing, he also directed the film's
first scenes. When Tripoli fell under siege by British forces, he and his
colleagues made a narrow escape by boarding a German military plane flying to Sicily. His African
adventure, later published in Marc’Aurelio as "The First
Flight", marked “the emergence of a new Fellini, no longer just a
screenwriter, working and sketching at his desk, but a filmmaker out in the
field”.

The apolitical
Fellini was finally freed of the draft when an Allied air raid over Bologna destroyed
his medical records. Fellini and Giulietta hid in her aunt’s apartment until
Mussolini's fall on July 25, 1943. After dating for nine months, the couple
were married on October 30, 1943. Several months later, Masina fell down the
stairs and suffered a miscarriage. She gave birth to a son, Pierfederico, on 22
March 1945 but the child died of encephalitis
a month later on 24 April. The tragedy had enduring emotional and artistic
repercussions

Neorealist apprenticeship (1944–1949)After the Allied liberation of Rome
on June 4, 1944, Fellini and Enrico De Seta opened the Funny Face Shop where
they survived the postwar recession drawing caricatures of American soldiers.
He became involved with Italian Neorealism when Roberto Rossellini, at work on Stories of
Yesteryear (later Rome, Open City), met Fellini in his shop
proposing he contribute gags and dialogue for the script. Aware of Fellini’s
reputation as Aldo Fabrizi’s “creative muse”, Rossellini also requested he try
to convince the actor to play the role of Father Giuseppe Morosini, the parish
priest executed by the SS
on April 4, 1944.

In
1947, Fellini and Sergio Amidei received an Oscar nomination for the
screenplay of Rome,
Open City.

Working
as both screenwriter and assistant director on Rossellini’s Paisà (Paisan)
in 1946, Fellini was entrusted to film the Sicilian scenes in Maiori. In February
1948, he was introduced to Marcello Mastroianni, then a young theatre
actor appearing in a play with Giulietta Masina. Establishing a close working
relationship with Alberto Lattuada, Fellini co-wrote the director’s Senza
pietà (Without Pity) and Il
mulino del Po (The Mill on the Po). Fellini also worked with
Rossellini on the anthology filmL'Amore
(1948), co-writing the screenplay and in one segment titled, "The Miracle",
acting opposite Anna Magnani. To play the role of a vagabond rogue
mistaken by Magnani for a saint, Fellini had to bleach his black hair blond.

Early films (1950–1953)- In 1950 Fellini co-produced and co-directed with
Alberto Lattuada Variety Lights (Luci del varietà), his first feature film. A
backstage comedy set among the world of small-time travelling performers, it
featured Giulietta Masina and Lattuada’s wife, Carla
del Poggio. Its release to poor reviews and limited distribution proved
disastrous for all concerned. The production company went bankrupt, leaving
both Fellini and Lattuada with debts to pay for over a decade. In February
1950, Paisà received an Oscar nomination for the screenplay by
Rossellini, Sergio Amidei, and Fellini.

After
travelling to Paris
for a script conference with Rossellini on Europa '51,
Fellini began production on The
White Sheik in September 1951, his first solo-directed feature.
Starring Alberto Sordi in the title role, the film is a
revised version of a treatment first written by Michelangelo Antonioni in 1949 and based on
the fotoromanzi, the photographed cartoon strip romances popular in
Italy at the time. Producer Carlo Ponti commissioned Fellini and Tullio
Pinelli to write the script but Antonioni rejected the story they
developed. With Ennio Flaiano, they re-worked the material into a
light-hearted satire about newlywed couple Ivan and Wanda Cavalli (Leopoldo
Trieste, Brunello Bovo) in Rome
to visit the Pope. Ivan’s prissy mask of respectability is soon demolished by
his wife’s obsession with the White Sheik. Highlighting the music of Nino Rota,
the film was selected at Cannes
(among the films in competition was Orson
Welles’s Othello) and then retracted. Screened at
the 13th Venice International Film
Festival, it was razzed by critics in "the atmosphere of a soccer
match”. One reviewer declared that Fellini had “not the slightest aptitude for
cinema direction".

In
1953, I
Vitelloni found favour with the critics and public. Winning the Silver
Lion Award in Venice,
it secured Fellini’s first international distributor.

Beyond neorealism (1954–1960) Fellini
directed La
Strada based on a script completed in 1952 with Pinelli and Flaiano.
During the last three weeks of shooting, Fellini experienced the first signs of
severe clinical depression. Aided by his wife, he undertook a brief period of
therapy with Freudian psychoanalyst Emilio Servadio.

Fellini
cast American actor Broderick Crawford to interpret the role of an
aging swindler in Il Bidone. Based partly on stories told to him by a
petty thief during production of La Strada, Fellini developed the script
into a con man’s slow descent towards a solitary death. To incarnate the role’s
"intense, tragic face", Fellini’s first choice had been Humphrey
Bogartbut after learning of the actor’s lung cancer, chose
Crawford after seeing his face on the theatrical poster of All the King’s Men (1949). The
film shoot was wrought with difficulties stemming from Crawford’s alcoholism. Savaged
by critics at the 16th Venice International Film
Festival, the film did miserable box office and did not receive
international distribution until 1964.

During
the autumn, Fellini researched and developed a treatment based on a film
adaptation of Mario Tobino’s novel, The Free Women of Magliano.
Located in a mental institution for women, financial backers considered the
subject had no potential and the project was abandoned.

While
preparing Nights of Cabiria in spring 1956, Fellini
learned of his father’s death by cardiac arrest at the age of sixty-two.
Produced by Dino De Laurentiis and starring Giulietta
Masina, the film took its inspiration from news reports of a woman’s
decapitated head retrieved in a lake and stories by Wanda, a shantytown
prostitute Fellini met on the set of Il Bidone.
Pier Paolo Pasolini was hired to translate
Flaiano and Pinelli’s dialogue into Roman dialect and to supervise researches
in the vice-afflicted suburbs of Rome.
The movie won the Academy Award for Best
Foreign Language Film at the 30th Academy Awards and brought Masina the Best
Actress Award at Cannes
for her performance.

The
Hollywood on the Tiber
phenomenon of 1958 in which American studios profited from the cheap studio
labour available in Rome provided the backdrop for photojournalists to steal
shots of celebrities on the via Veneto. The scandal provoked by Turkish dancer
Haish Nana’s improvised striptease at a nightclub captured Fellini’s
imagination: he decided to end his latest script-in-progress, Moraldo in the
City, with an all-night "orgy" at a seaside villa. Pierluigi
Praturlon’s photos of Anita Ekberg wading fully dressed in the Trevi
Fountain provided further inspiration for Fellini and his scriptwriters.
Changing the title of the screenplay to La
Dolce Vita, Fellini soon clashed with his producer on casting: the
director insisted on the relatively unknown Mastroianni while De Laurentiis
wanted Paul
Newman as a hedge on his investment. Reaching an impasse, De Laurentiis
sold the rights to publishing mogul Angelo
Rizzoli. Shooting began on March 16, 1959 with Anita Ekberg climbing the
stairs to the cupola of Saint Peter’s in a mammoth décor constructed at Cinecittà.
The statue of Christ flown by helicopter over Rome to Saint Peter's Square was inspired by an
actual media event on May 1, 1956, which Fellini had witnessed. The film
wrapped August 15 on a deserted beach at Passo
Oscuro with a bloated mutant fish designed by Piero
Gherardi.

La
Dolce Vita broke all
box office records. Despite scalpers selling tickets at 1000 lire, crowds
queued in line for hours to see an “immoral movie” before the censors banned
it. At an exclusive Milan
screening on February 5, 1960, one outraged patron spat on Fellini while others
hurled insults. Denounced in parliament by right-wing conservatives,
undersecretary Domenico Magrì of the Christian Democrats demanded tolerance for
the film’s controversial themes. The Vatican's
official press organ, l'Osservatore Romano, lobbied for
censorship while the Board of Roman Parish Priests and the Genealogical Board
of Italian Nobility attacked the film. In one documented instance involving
favourable reviews written by the Jesuits of San Fedele, defending La
Dolce Vita had severe consequences. In competition at Cannes alongside Antonioni’s L’Avventura,
the film won the Palme d'Or awarded by presiding juror Georges
Simenon. The Belgian writer was promptly “hissed at” by the disapproving
festival crowd.

Art films and dreams (1961–1969) - A major discovery for Fellini after his Italian neorealism period (1950–1959) was the
work of Carl
Jung. After meeting Jungian psychoanalyst Dr. Ernst Bernhard in early 1960,
he read Jung's autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
(1963). Bernhard also recommended that Fellini consult the I Ching and
keep a record of his dreams. What Fellini formerly accepted as "his
extrasensory perceptions" were now interpreted as psychic manifestations
of the unconscious. Bernhard’s focus on Jungian depth psychology proved to be
the single greatest influence on Fellini’s mature style and marked the turning
point in his work from neorealism to filmmaking that was "primarily
oneiric". As a consequence, Jung's seminal ideas on the anima and
the animus, the role of archetypes and the collective unconscious
directly influenced such films as 8½ (1963), Juliet of the Spirits (1965), Satyricon (1969), Casanova (1976), and City of
Women (1980). Other key influences on his work include Luis
Buñuel, Charlie Chaplin, Sergei
Eisenstein, Buster Keaton, Laurel
and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, and Roberto Rossellini.

Exploiting
La Dolce Vita’s success, financier Angelo Rizzoli set up Federiz in
1960, an independent film company, for Fellini and production manager Clemente
Fracassi to discover and produce new talent. Despite the best intentions, their
overcautious editorial and business skills forced the company to close down
soon after cancelling Pasolini’s project, Accattone
(1961).

Condemned
as a "public sinner" for La Dolce Vita, Fellini responded with
The Temptations of Doctor Antonio, a segment in the omnibus Boccaccio
'70. His first colour film, it was the sole project green-lighted at
Federiz. Infused with the surrealistic satire that characterized the young Fellini’s
work at Marc’Aurelio, the film ridiculed a crusader against vice who
goes insane trying to censor a billboard of Anita Ekberg espousing the virtues
of milk.

Giving
the order to start production in spring 1962, Fellini signed deals with his
producer Rizzoli, fixed dates, had sets constructed, cast Mastroianni, Anouk
Aimée, and Sandra Milo in lead roles, and did screen tests at the
Scalera Studios in Rome.
He hired cinematographerGianni
Di Venanzo, among key personnel. But apart from naming his hero Guido
Anselmi, he still couldn't decide what his character did for a living. The
crisis came to a head in April when, sitting in his Cinecittà office, he began
a letter to Rizzoli confessing he had "lost his film" and had to
abandon the project. Interrupted by the chief machinist requesting he celebrate
the launch of 8½, Fellini put aside the letter and went on the set.
Raising a toast to the crew, he "felt overwhelmed by shame… I was in a no
exit situation. I was a director who wanted to make a film he no longer
remembers. And lo and behold, at that very moment everything fell into place. I
got straight to the heart of the film. I would narrate everything that had been
happening to me. I would make a film telling the story of a director who no
longer knows what film he wanted to make".

Shooting
began on May 9, 1962. Perplexed by the seemingly chaotic, incessant
improvisation on the set, Deena Boyer, the director’s American press officer at
the time, asked for a rationale. Fellini told her that he hoped to convey the
three levels "on which our minds live: the past, the present, and the
conditional - the realm of fantasy". After shooting wrapped on October 14,
Nino Rota
composed various circus marches and fanfares that would later become signature
tunes of the maestro’s cinema. Nominated for four Oscars, 8½ won awards
for best foreign language film and best costume design in black-and-white. In California for the ceremony, Fellini toured Disneyland
with Walt
Disney the day after.

Increasingly
attracted to parapsychology, Fellini met the Turin magician Gustavo Rol
in 1963. Rol, a former banker, introduced him to the world of Spiritism and
séances.
In 1964, Fellini experimented with LSD under the supervision of Emilio
Servadio, his psychoanalyst during the 1954 production of La Strada. For
years reserved about what actually occurred that Sunday afternoon, he admitted
in 1992 that objects and their functions no longer had any significance. All I
perceived was perception itself, the hell of forms and figures devoid of human
emotion and detached from the reality of my unreal environment. I was an
instrument in a virtual world that constantly renewed its own meaningless image
in a living world that was itself perceived outside of nature. And since the
appearance of things was no longer definitive but limitless, this paradisiacal
awareness freed me from the reality external to my self. The fire and the rose,
as it were, became one.

Fellini's
hallucinatory insights were given full flower in his first colour feature Juliet of the Spirits (1965), depicting Giulietta
Masina as Juliet, a housewife who rightly suspects her husband's infidelity
and succumbs to the voices of spirits summoned during a séance at her home. Her
sexually voracious next door neighbor Suzy (Sandra Milo)
introduces Juliet to a world of uninhibited sensuality but Juliet is haunted by
childhood memories of her Catholic guilt and a teenaged friend who committed
suicide. Complex and filled with psychological symbolism, the film is set to a
jaunty score by Nino Rota.

Nostalgia and politics (1970–1980) - To help promote Satyricon in the United States, Fellini flew to Los Angeles in January 1970 for interviews
with Dick
Cavett and David Frost. He also met with film director Paul
Mazursky who wanted to star him alongside Donald
Sutherland in his new film, Alex in Wonderland. In February, Fellini
scouted locations in Paris
for The Clowns, a docu-fiction for television
based on his childhood memories of the circus and a "coherent theory of
clowning." As he saw it, the clown "was always the caricature of a
well-established, ordered, peaceful society. But today all is temporary,
disordered, grotesque. Who can still laugh at clowns?... All the world plays a
clown now."

In
March 1971, Fellini began production on Roma,
a seemingly random collection of episodes informed by the director's memories
and impressions of Rome.
The "diverse sequences," writes Fellini scholar Peter
Bondanella, "are held together only by the fact that they all
ultimately originate from the director’s fertile imagination." The film’s
opening scene anticipates Amarcord while its most surreal sequence
involves an ecclesiastical fashion show in which nuns and priests roller skate
past shipwrecks of cobwebbed skeletons.

Over a
period of six months between January and June 1973, Fellini shot the Oscar-winning
Amarcord.
Loosely based on the director’s 1968 autobiographical essay My Rimini,
the film depicts the adolescent Titta and his friends working out their sexual
frustrations against the religious and Fascist backdrop of a provincial town in
Italy
during the 1930s. Produced by Franco
Cristaldi, the seriocomic movie became Fellini’s second biggest
commercial success after La Dolce Vita. Circular in form, Amarcord
avoids plot and linear narrative in a way similar to The Clowns and Roma.
The director's overriding concern with developing a poetic form of cinema was
first outlined in a 1965 interview he gave to The
New Yorker journalist Lillian Ross: "I am trying to free
my work from certain constrictions – a story with a beginning, a development,
an ending. It should be more like a poem with metre and cadence."

Late
films and projects (1981–1990)

Organized
by his publisher Diogenes Verlag in 1982, the first major exhibition of 63
drawings by Fellini was held in Paris, Brussels, and the Pierre
Matisse Gallery in New York. A gifted caricaturist, much of the inspiration
for his sketches was derived from his own dreams while the films-in-progress
both originated from and stimulated drawings for characters, decor, costumes
and set designs. Under the title, I disegni di Fellini (Fellini’s
Designs), he published 350 drawings executed in pencil, watercolours, and felt
pens.

On
September 6, 1985 Fellini was awarded the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement
at the 42nd Venice Film Festival. That same year, he became the first
non-American to receive the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s
annual award for cinematic achievement.

Long
fascinated by Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of
Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, Fellini accompanied the Peruvian
author on a journey to the Yucatán to assess the feasibility of a film. After first
meeting Castaneda in Rome
in October 1984, Fellini drafted a treatment with Pinelli titled Viaggio a
Tulun. Producer Alberto Grimaldi, prepared to buy film rights to
all of Castaneda’s work, then paid for pre-production research taking Fellini
and his entourage from Rome to Los Angeles
and the jungles of Mexico
in October 1985. When Castaneda inexplicably disappeared and the project fell
through, Fellini’s mystico-shamanic adventures were scripted with Pinelli and
serialized in Corriere della Sera in May 1986. A barely
veiled satirical interpretation of Castaneda's work, Viaggio a Tulun was
published in 1989 as a graphic novel with artwork by Milo Manara
and as Trip to Tulum in America
in 1990.

For Intervista,
produced by Ibrahim Moussa and RAI Television, Fellini intercut memories of the
first time he visited Cinecittà in 1939 with present-day footage of himself at
work on a screen adaptation of Franz Kafka’s
Amerika. A meditation on the nature of memory
and film production, it won the special 40th Anniversary Prize at Cannes and the 15th Moscow International Film
Festival Golden Prize. In Brussels
later that year, a panel of thirty professionals from eighteen European
countries named Fellini the world’s best director and 8½ the best
European film of all time.

In
early 1989 Fellini began production on The Voice of the Moon, based on Ermanno
Cavazzoni’s novel, Il poema dei lunatici (The Lunatics’ Poem). A
small town was built at Empire Studios on the via Pontina outside Rome. Starring Roberto
Benigni as Ivo Salvini, a madcap poetic figure newly released from a mental
institution, the character is a combination of La Strada's Gelsomina, Pinocchio,
and Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi. Fellini improvised as he filmed,
using as a guide a rough treatment written with Pinelli. Despite its modest
critical and commercial success in Italy, and its warm reception by
French critics, it failed to interest North American distributors. Fellini won
the Praemium Imperiale, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize
in the visual arts, awarded by the Japan Art Association in 1990.

Final years (1991–1993) - In
July 1991 and April 1992, Fellini worked in close collaboration with Canadian
filmmaker Damian Pettigrew to establish "the longest
and most detailed conversations ever recorded on film". Described as the
"Maestro's spiritual testament” by his biographer Tullio
Kezich, excerpts culled from the conversations later served as the basis of
their feature documentary, Fellini: I'm a Born Liar (2002) and
the book, I'm a Born Liar: A Fellini Lexicon.
Finding it increasingly difficult to secure financing for feature films,
Fellini developed a suite of television projects whose titles reflect their
subjects: Attore, Napoli, L’Inferno,
L’opera lirica, and L’America.

In
April 1993, Fellini received his fifth Oscar
for lifetime achievement "in recognition of his cinematic accomplishments
that have thrilled and entertained audiences worldwide". On June 16, he
entered the Cantonal Hospital in Zurich for an
"angioplasty
on his femoral artery" but suffered a stroke at the Grand
Hotel in Rimini
two months later. Partially paralyzed, he was first transferred to Ferrara for
rehabilitation and then to the Policlinico Umberto I in Rome to be near his wife, also hospitalized.
He suffered a second stroke and fell into an irreversible coma. Fellini died in Rome on October 31 at the
age of 73, a day after his fiftieth wedding anniversary. The memorial service
was held in Studio 5 at Cinecittà attended by an estimated "70,000
people". At the request of Giulietta
Masina, trumpeter Mauro Maur played the "Improvviso dell'Angelo"
by Nino Rota
during the funeral ceremony. Five months later on March 23, 1994, Giulietta
Masina died of lung cancer.

Fellini,
Masina and their son Pierfederico are buried in a bronze sepulchre sculpted by Arnaldo
Pomodoro. Designed as a ship's prow, the tomb is located at the main
entrance to the Cemetery
of Rimini. The Federico Fellini Airport in Rimini is named in
his honour.

Manoel
Cândido Pinto de Oliveira, born December 11, 1908) is a Portuguesefilm
director and screenwriter born in Cedofeita, Porto. He first began
making films in 1927, when he and some friends attempted to make a film about World War I.
In 1931 he completed his first film Douro, Faina Fluvial, a documentary about
his home city Porto made in the city symphony genre. He
made his feature film debut in 1942 with Aniki-Bóbó
and continued to make shorts and documentaries for the next 30 years, gaining a
minimal amount of recognition without being considered a major world film
director. Among the numerous factors that prevented Oliveira from making more
films during this time period were the political situation in Portugal,
family obligations and money.

In
1971 Oliveira made his second feature narrative film Past and Present, a social satire
that both set the standard for his film career afterwards and gained him
recognition in the global film community. He continued making films of growing
ambition throughout the 1970s and 1980s, gaining critical acclaim and numerous
awards. Since the late 1980s he has been one of the most prolific working film
directors and continues to make an average of one film per year past the age of
100. In March 2008 he was reported to be the oldest active film director in the
world, and is possibly the third oldest film director ever after George
Abbott, who lived to be 107, and Spanish film director Miguel
Morayta, who died at the age of 105 and 10 months in 2013. He is also the
only filmmaker whose active career has spanned from the silent era
to the digital age. Among his numerous awards are two
Career Golden Lions from the Venice Film Festival.

Early
life

Manoel
de Oliveira was born in Porto, Portugal, on December 11, 1908, to Francisco
José de Oliveira and Cândida Ferreira Pinto. His family were wealthy industrialists
and agricultural landowners. His father owned a dry-goods factory, produced the
first electric light bulbs in Portugal
and built an electric energy plant before he died in 1932. Oliveira was
educated at the Colegio Universal in Porto before attending a Jesuit boarding
school in Galicia, Spain. As a teenager
his goal was to become an actor. At 17, he joined his brothers as an executive
in his father's factories, where he remained for the majority of his adult life
when not making films. In a 1981 Sight and
Sound article, John Gillett describes Oliveira as having
"spent most of his life in business ... making films only when
circumstances allowed."

From
an early age, Oliveira was interested in the poverty of the lower classes, the
arts and especially films. While he has named D. W.
Griffith, Eric von Stroheim, Charlie
Chaplin, Max Linder, Carl Dreyer's
The Passion of Joan of Arc and Sergei
Eisenstein's The General Line as early influences, he was
also disappointed to have virtually no Portuguese filmmakers to emulate. The Portuguese
film industry was also highly censored and restricted under the fascist Salazar regime that lasted from the early
1930s until the mid-1970s. His later films, such as The Cannibals and Belle
Toujours (a sequel to Belle de Jour), suggest an affinity with
Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel. He has stated "I'm closer to Buñuel.
He's a reverse Catholic and I was raised a Catholic. It's a religion that
permits sin, and Buñuel at the very deepest is one of the most moralistic
directors but he does everything to the contrary. I never say that I'm Catholic
because to be Catholic is very difficult. I prefer to be thought of as a great
sinner."

Film
career

1927–1942:
Early documentaries and first feature

His
first attempt at filmmaking was in 1927 when he and his friends worked on a
film about the Portuguese experience in World War I,
although the film was never made. He enrolled in Italian film-maker
Rino Lupo's acting school at age 20 and appeared as an extra in Lupo's film Fátima
Milagrosa. Years later in 1933 he also had the distinction of having acted
in the second Portuguese sound film, A Canção de Lisboa. Eventually Oliveira
turned his attention back to filmmaking when he saw Walther
Ruttmann's documentaryBerlin: Symphony of a City.
Ruttman's film is the most famous of a small, short lived silent documentary
film genre: city symphony films. These
films portrays the life of a city, mainly through visual impressions in a semi-documentary
style, without the narrative content of more mainstream films, though the
sequencing of events can imply a kind of loose theme or impression of the
city's daily life. Other examples include Alberto Cavalcanti's Rien que les heures and Dziga
Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera. Oliveira has said
that Ruttman's film was his "most useful lesson in film technique",
but that he also found it cold, mechanical and lacking humanity.

The
discovery of Ruttman's film prompted Oliveira to direct his own first film in
1931, a documentary short titled Douro, Faina Fluvial. The film is a
portrait of his hometown Porto and the labor and industry that takes place along the
cities main river, the Douro River. Rino Lupo invited Oliveira to show the
film at the International Congress of Film Critics in Lisbon, where the majority of the Portuguese
audience booed. However other foreign critics and artists who were in
attendance praised the film, such as Luigi
Pirandello and Émile Vuillermoz. Oliveira re-edited the film with
a new soundtrack and re-released it in 1934. And again in 1994, Oliveira
modified the film by adding a new, more avant-garde soundtrack by Freitas Branco.
Over the next 10 years Oliveira struggled to make films, abandoning several
ambitious projects and making a handful of short documentaries on subjects
ranging from artistic portraits of coastal cities in Portugal
to industrial films on the origins of Portugal's auto industry. One of
these shorts was a documentary about the inauguration of the hydro-electrical
plant that his father built, Hulha Branca. He also first met and
befriended Portuguese playwright José
Régio during this time period. Oliveira would go on to adapt four of
Régio's plays as films.

Fifteen
years after his first attempt at filmmaking, Oliveira made his feature film
debut in 1942. Aniki-Bóbó is a portrait of Porto's
street children and based on a short story by Rodrigo de Freitas. Oliveira used
non-professional actors to portray the children. The story centers around two
young boys who compete for the attention of a young girl. One of the boys in an
extroverted bully, while the other is shy and innocent. The film was a
commercial failure when it opened, and its merit only came to be recognized
over time. Oliveira has stated that he was criticized for portraying children
that lied, cheated and stole, which in his mind made them act more like adults.
The poor reception of the film forced Manoel de Oliveira to abandon other film
projects he was involved in, and to dedicate himself to a vineyard that his
wife had inherited. In the early 1950s he and playwright José Régio attempted
to submit a screenplay to the Estado Novo run Film Fund commission, but the
commission refused to either accept or reject the film. Oliveira attributed this
to his own well known dislike for the Salazar regime.

1955–1970:
Return to filmmaking

In
1955 Oliveira traveled to Germany
to study new techniques in color cinematography. He re-emerged onto the film
scene in 1956 with The Artist and the City, a twenty six
minute documentary short film shot in color. Much like his first film, The
Artist and the City is a portrait of Porto, juxtaposing
color shots of the city with paintings being created by local artist António
Cruz. The film was shown in a number of festivals to positive reviews. In 1959,
Portugal's National
Federation of Industrial Millers commissioned O Pão, a color documentary
on Portugal's
bread industry.

In
1963, Rite of Spring (O Acto de Primavera),
a partly documentary, partly narrative film depicting an
annual passion
play, marked a turning point for his career. The play is based on a 16th Century
passion play by Francisco Vaz de Guimaraes and was actually performed by
villagers in northern Portugal.
Along with the performance of the play, Oliveira staged the actors rehearsals,
spectators watching the actors and even himself and his crew preparing to film
the performance. Oliveira has said that making the film "profoundly
altered his conception of cinema" as a tool not to simulate reality, but
merely represent it. O Acto de Primavera was called the first political
film from Portugal
by film critic Henrique Costa and gave Oliveira his first world wide
recognition as a filmmaker. The film won the Grand Prix at the Siena Film
Festival and Oliveira had his first film retrospective at the Locarno Film Festival in 1964.

This
was shortly followed by The Hunt (A caça), a grim,
surrealistic short narrative film that contrasted with the positive tones of
his previous film. Due to censorship issues, Oliveira was forced to add a
"happy ending" to the initial release of the film and was unable to
restore his original ending until 1988. Because of this film and anti- Salazar
comments Oliveira made after a screening of O Acto de Primavera, he was
arrested by the PIDE
in 1963. He spent 10 days in jail and was interrogated until finally being
released with the help of his friend Manuel Meneres. His career again slowed
down and he only completed two short documentaries in the next 9 years.

In
1967, the Cineclube do Porto sponsored a Week
of Portuguese Cinema, where many filmmakers from the blossoming Cinema Novo
movement screened films and discussed "the precarious situation of
Portuguese cinema in the marketplace, and the decline of the film club
movement." This resulted in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation's
creation of the Centro Portuges de Cinema, which would help to finance and
distribute films in Portugal.
The first film that the foundation chose to sponsor was Oliveira's next
feature, and the early 1970s would come to be known as the Gulbenkian Years of
Portuguese cinema.

Since the 1970s, Oliveira has been at his most active, with the vast
majority of his films having been made after his seventy-fifth birthday.
Whether a late bloomer or a victim of unfortunate delays and political
censorship, he has become Portugal's
preeminent filmmaker during the later part of his long life. Film critic J. Hoberman
has said "at an age when many men think of retirement, Oliveira emerged
from obscurity as one of the 70s leading modernists, a peer of Straub,
Syberberg and Duras."
With a newfound artistic freedom after António de Oliveira Salazar's stroke in
1968 and the April 1974 Carnation Revolution, Oliveira's career began
to flourish and receive international acclaim. Ironically the Carnation
Revolution also resulted in his families factories being occupied by factions
of the Left and subsequently going bankrupt. Due to this, Oliveira lost most of
his personal wealth and his home of thirty-five years.

Oliveira's
second return to filmmaking came in 1971 with Past and Present (O Passado e o
Presente), a satirical black comedy on marriage and the bourgeoisie.
With its lyrical surrealism and farcical situations, the film was a shift from
his earlier work about lower-class people. Based on a play by Joao Cesar Monteiro, the film stars Maria de
Saisset as Vanda, a woman who only falls in love with her husbands after they
have died. Past and Present was the first of what has become known as
Oliveira's "Tetralogy of frustrated loves". It was followed by Benilde or the Virgin Mother, Doomed Love and Francisca. Each of these films share the
theme of unfulfilled love, the backdrop of a repressive society, and the
beginning of Oliveira's unique cinematic style.

Benilde or the Virgin Mother (Benilde ou a Virgem Mãe) was
based on a play by Oliveira's long-time friend and fellow Salazar regime
dissident José Régio and released in 1975. This would be the first
of many films that would examine the relationship between film and theater in
Oliveira's work, and the film opens with roaming exterior shots of the Tobis
Studios in Lisbon
until reaching the constructed set of the film. In the film Benilde is a
sleepwalking eighteen-year-old who mysteriously becomes impregnated and
believes herself to have been chosen for immaculate conception, despite the
angry and dismissive reactions of her bourgeoisie family and friends. Upon its
release, the film was criticized for being irrelevant to the political climate
of 1975 Portugal.
However Oliveira defended its depiction of a moralistic and social repression
on its characters as not being "in opposition to or in contradiction with
our own times."

Doomed Love (Amor de Perdição) is a tragic love story
based on the novel by Camilo Castelo Branco. The film depicts the
doomed love affair of Teresa and Simao, who come from two rival wealthy
families. Teresa is sent to a convent for refusing to marry her cousin
Baltasar, and after Simao kills Baltasar he is sentenced to death and
eventually sent into exile. Teresa dies after Simao is sent away, and Simao
dies at sea. Oliveira made two versions of the film: a six-part television
miniseries that was broadcast in 1978 to disastrous reviews, and a shorter
theatrical film released in 1979, which received rave reviews and was profiled
on the cover of Le Monde. Oliveira has stated that whereas most film
adaptations of literature attempt to adapt the narrative to film, he wanted
instead to adapt "the text" of Branco's novel, much like Jean-Marie
Straub and Daniele Huillet's The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena
Bach was a film more about music itself than about its own story. He
has stated that "in a novel where a lot happens, it would be a waste of
time to show everything. Besides, the literary narration, the way of telling
the story, the style, the sonorousness of the phrases and the composition are
all just as beautiful and interesting as the events that unfold. Therefore, it
seemed convienent for me to focus on the text, and that is what I did."
The film achieves this idea by including extensive narration, characters that
speak their thoughts or read letters aloud and shots of written text.

In
1981 Oliveira made Francisca, based on the novel by Agustina Bessa Luis. The film is a tragic love
triangle detailing a real life relationship between Fanny Owen, Amor de Perdição author Camilo Castelo Branco
and Branco's best friend Jose Augusto. Oliveira's wife was a distant relative
of Owen and had access to private letter' s written by all three protagonists
in the film. The film was screened to great acclaim at the Director's Fortnight at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival and furthered
Oliveira's global recognition. In addition to Francisca, Oliveira has
adapted six other novels or stories from author Augustina Bessa Luis, as well
as collaborated on the screenplay for the documentary Visita ou Memórias e
Confissões. This was also the first film which Oliveira made with producer Paulo
Branco, who would go on to produce the majority of Oliveira's film, and
with actor Diogo Dória.

Following
the success of Francisca, Oliveira made three documentary films. Visita
ou Memórias e Confissões is an autobiographical documentary about Oliveira's
family history. After completing the film, he decided that it will not be
released until after his death. He then made Lisboa Cultural and Nice...
À Propos de Jean Vigo, a documentary for French television on the city of Nice, and also a
tribute to French filmmaker Jean Vigo.

Oliveira
then made his most ambitious film to that date, The Satin Slipper (Le Soulier
de Satin), based on the notorious 1929
epic play by Paul Claudel, which is rarely performed in its
entirety due to its length. The seven hour film took Oliveira two years to
complete. It was Oliveira's first film in French, as well as his first film
with actor Luís Miguel Cintra, who would go on to act in
all of his films from then on. The story of The Satin Slipper is about
the unrequited love of sixteenth century conquistador Don Rodrigue and
nobelwoman Dona Prouheze with the backdrop of colonialism in Africa and the Americas. The
film opens with a theater gradually being filled with an audience and an
introduction to the film on stage. The film itself uses very theatrical set
pieces, such as cardboard waves and backdrops. The film was never released
theatrically, but was screened at both the 1985 Cannes Film Festival and the 1985 Venice Film Festival, where Oliveira received
a special Golden Lion for his career up to that point. Later the Brussels
Cinematheque awarded the film its L'Âge d'or Prize.

In
1986 Oliveira made one of his most experimental films, My Case (Mon
Cas), partially based on José
Régio's one act play O Meu Caso, although the film also takes
inspiration from Samuel Beckett's Fizzles and
the Book
of Job. Oliveira takes a surreal and meta-narrative approach to examine the
relationship between art and life. The film begins with a theater being filled
with the audience and actors before a play is about to begin. A mysterious man
play by Luis Miguel Cintra enters the stage and presents "his case"
about the fallacies of theater and its illusions. One by one all of the play's
actors and technicians state their cases about what bothers them about the play
and its relation to their own lives. An audience member then takes the stage to
make a case for what the collective audience wants. This is followed by three
consecutive but very different versions of the one act play: the first is a
straight forward farce, the second is presented as a slapstick silent movie,
and the third is performed with the dialogue read backwards. The stage
performance ends with video footage of war and disasters from around the world
and Pablo
Picasso's painting Guernica. The entire film then shifts to a
retelling of the Book of Job, with Cintra as Job and Bulle Ogier
as his wife. This sequence ends with a close-up of Leonardo
da Vinci's Mona Lisa. My Case opened the 1986 Venice Film
Festival and was released in 1987.

Oliveira
next made a satirical film in the tradition of Luis
Buñuel, The Cannibals (Os Canibais) in
1988. The film is based on a short story by Álvaro Carvalhal and stars Luis Miguel Cintra, Leonor
Silveira and Diogo Dória. José Régio first showed Oliveira the
little known story, and Oliveira decided to make the film his only opera in collaboration
with composer Joao Paes. The film also contains a demonic narrator Niccolo who
appears and disappears from scenes magically. In the film, the beautiful young
Margarida (Silveira) falls in love with the mysterious Viscount of Aveleda
(Cintra), while rejecting the advances of the notorious Don João
(Dória). On their wedding night, the Viscount reveals to Margarida that his
great mystery is that he has no arms or legs and is "a living
corpse". Margarida throws herself out of their bedroom window in horror
and the Viscount attempts to drink poison but rolls into the fireplace instead,
singing an aria as he burns to death. Just then Don João enters intending to
murder the Viscount in jealously and witnesses the Viscounts death. The next
morning, Margarida's father, brothers and family magistrate wake up and want to
be served breakfast, but find an empty house. They look for the Viscount, but
only discover a strange meat cooking in the fireplace, and conclude that it is
a strange delicacy being prepared for them. The four men unknowingly eat the
Viscount's body for breakfast with great delight. Suddenly they hear a gunshot
and rush to the garden where they find Margarida's dead body and Don João
sitting next to her with a self- inflicted gunshot wound in his chest. As Don
João dies, he explains everything that has happened to the family and tells
them they can find the Viscount in the fireplace. Horrified at their own
cannibalism, the father and brother's decide to commit suicide until the
magistrate points out that they are now the sole heirs to the Viscount's
fortune. The father and brother's decide to live, and turn into rapid dogs and
eat the magistrate, who has turned into a pig.[30]The Cannibals was screened in competition at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival and won the
Critics Special award at the 1988 São Paulo International Film
Festival.

Oliveira then
returned to the works of Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco with Day of
Despair (O Dia do Desespero) in 1992. The film stars Mário Barroso
as Branco, with actors Teresa Madruga, Luís Miguel Cintra and Diogo Dória
playing both themselves and Ana Plácido, Freitas Fortuna and Dr. Edmundo
Magalhães, respectively. The film was shot in the same house that Branco lived
his final years and committed suicide and is both a documentary and a narrative
film about the famous Portuguese writer. In 1993 Oliveira made Abraham's
Valley (Vale Abraão), based on the novel by Agustina Bessa-Luís. Oliveira had wanted to
film Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary,
but was dissuaded by producer Paulo Branco
due to budgetary restraints. Oliveira then suggested to Bessa-Luís that she
write an updated version of the novel set in Portugal, which resulted in the
novel in 1991. Abraham's Valley is not a retelling of the Flaubert book,
however Madame Bovary is both a subtext and a physical presence in the
film. The film stars Leonor Silveira as Ema, a discontent Portuguese
woman who wants a passionate life like the one she reads about in Flaubert's
novel. Like Madame Bovary, Ema marries a doctor that she does not love and has
many extramarital affairs before dying in an accident that may or may not be a
suicide. Unlike Madame Bovary, there is no scandal in her love affairs, which
are simply accepted by both her husband and the society that she lives in. The
film won the Critics award at the 1993 São Paulo International Film Festival,
as well as an award for Best Artistic Contribution Award at the 1993 Tokyo International Film Festival.
In 1994 Oliveira made The Box (A Caixa), based on a play by Helder Prista
Monteiro. The film stars Luis Miguel Cintra as a blind homeless man whose only
means of support in a poor neighborhood in Lisbon is his
official, government issued alms box. It was screened in competition at the
1994 Tokyo International Film Festival.

In 1995
Oliveira's reputation had grown and his films were internationally acclaimed.
That year he made his first of many films starring international movie stars: The Convent (O Convento), starring John
Malkovich and Catherine
Deneuve. The film is based on the novel As Terras Do Risco by
Agustina Bessa-Luís and examines the Faustian theme of good
versus evil. In the film Malkovich plays an American writer who travels to Portugal with
his wife (Deneuve) to research his theory that William Shakespeare was really Jacques Perez, a
Jewish Spaniard who fled his native country to avoid the Spanish Inquisition. The couple stay
in a monastery a with strange, demonic- looking staff and they eventually end
up having affairs with two staff members. The film was screened in competition
at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival and won the
Prize of the Catalan Screenwriter's Critic and Writer's Association at the 1995
Sitges - Catalonian
International Film Festival. In 1996 Oliveira worked with French
star Michel Piccoli and Greek film star Irene Papas
in Party. The film was co-written by Oliveira
and Agustina Bessa-Luís from an original idea by Oliveira. In the film, a
married couple played by Leonor Silveira and Rogério Samora have a dinner party
that includes a famous Greek actress (Papas) and her lover (Piccoli) and the
film consists of conversations between these four characters at parties over
the course of five years. The film was screened in competition at the 1996 Venice Film Festival and won Oliveira
the award for Best Director at the 1996 Portuguese Golden Globe Awards.

In 1997 Oliveira
made Voyage to the Beginning of the World
(Viagem ao Princípio do Mundo), which was the final film of Italian film
star Marcello Mastroianni. In the film
Mastroianni plays an aging film director named Manoel who travels on a road
trip across Northern Portugal with French film actor Afonso (Jean-Yves Gautier)
and two other young companions, Judite (Leonor Silveira) and Duarte (Diogo Dória). Afonso wants to see the
Portuguese village that his father grew up in and see the relatives that he has
never met. On the way, Manoel stops at several locations on the road that he
remembers from his childhood, only to find them much different than he had
remembered. The film is autobiographical in that the locations on the road are
real locations from Oliveira's childhood. The film is also based on the experiences
of actor Yves Afonso,
whose father had immigrated from Portugal
to France
and who had met his long lost relatives during a French-Portuguese
co-production in 1987. The film was screened out of competition at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival and won the FIPRESCI
Prize and a Special Mention from the Ecumenical Jury. It won other
awards at the 1997 Haifa International Film Festival
and the 1997 Tokyo International Film Festival.

Oliveira then
made Anxiety (Inquietude) in 1998. The
episodic film contains three short films based on literary works by Helder
Prista Monteiro (Os Immortais), António Patrício (Suzy) and
Agustina Bessa-Luís (Mãe de Um Rio). In
Os Immortais a 90-year-old man (José Pinto) concludes that old age is
horrible and attempts to convince his middle aged son (Luís Miguel Cintra) to
commit suicide. In Suzy, an aristocrat (Diogo Dória) has an affair with
a beautiful young cocotte (Leonor Silveira), but social class differences
prevent him from having a deep, meaningful relationship with her. In Mãe de
Um Rio, Leonor
Baldaque plays a discontent small town girl who yearns for a more
exotic life and seek advice from the Mother of the River (Irene Papas). The
film won Oliveira another award for Best Director at the 1998 Portuguese Golden Globe Awards. In 1999 Oliveira
made The Letter (La Lettre), based
on the 17th century French novel The Princess of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette. Oliveira had wanted to
make a film from the novel since the late 1970s, but had initially thought that
it was too complicated to be filmed. The film updates the novel to modern day
and stars Chiara Mastroianni as Catherine de Clèves, Antoine
Chappey as the husband that she does not love, Leonor Silveira as
her childhood friend who has become a nun and her confidant, and Portuguese
rock star Pedro Abrunhosa playing himself in the role of
the dashing Duke of Nemours, whom Catherine is in love with. Abrunhosa also
wrote some original songs for the film. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival.

Oliveira made The Uncertainty Principle
(O Princípio da Incerteza) in 2002. The film is based on the 2001 novel O
Princípio da Incerteza:Joia de Familia by Agustina Bessa-Luís, which won
the Grand Prize from the Portuguese Writer's Association. In the film, Leonor
Baldaque plays Camila, who marries a man (Ivo Canelas) to help
alleviate her family's financial difficulties instead of her boyfriend (Ricardo
Trêpa). Camila's husband begins an affair with Vanessa (Leonor
Silveira), which Camila is indifferent about. This infuriates
Vanessa who proceeds to do everything she can to make Camila suffer. In then
end Vanessa and Camila's husband become involved with an illegal deal with some
gangsters, which Camila refuses to help them with. The film was screened in
competition at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. This was
followed by A Talking Picture (Um Filme Falado),
starring Leonor Silveira, Filipa de Almeida, Catherine
Deneuve, John Malkovich, Irene Papas
and Stefania Sandrelli in 2003. In the film
Silveira takes her young daughter (Almeida) on a cruise to Bombay to meet her father's family and
teaches her about the history of the places that they pass through along the
way. These sights include such places as Ceuta, Marseilles,
Athens,
Naples
and Pompeii.
They also meet and learn about three successful women (Deneuve, Papas and
Sandrelli) from certain location and have long conversations with the ship's
captain (Malkovich), often dealing with the conflicts between Christianity and
Islam. The film was screened in competition at the 2003 Venice Film festival,
where it won the SIGNIS Award.

In 2004 Oliveira
made The Fifth Empire (O Quinto Império -
Ontem Como Hoje), a highly political film based on the play El-Rey
Sebastiao by José Régio. The film chronicles the history of King Sebastian I of Portugal, and at a
screening at the 2004 Venice Film Festival
Oliveira acknowledged that US President George W. Bush
had "a "Sebastianist" inclination in his expressed desire to
spread democracy and freedom around the globe in his own version of the Fifth
Empire." In the film King Sebastain (Ricardo Trêpa) contemplates pursuing
his crusade in the Middle East that would lead
to the Battle of Alcácer Quibir (where he would
eventually die) and the counsel that he seeks from a variety of advisors,
friends and family members. The film portrays King Sebastian as obsessed with
his place in history and with his own myth of himself, while creating violent
situations all around him. The film was screened at Venice out of competition as part of
Oliveira's Career Golden Lion award. Oliveira followed this film with Magic Mirror
(Espelho Mágico) in 2005. Based on the novel A Alma dos Ricos by Agustina Bessa-Luís, the film stars Leonor
Silveira, Ricardo Trêpa, Luís Miguel Cintra, Leonor
Baldaque and Michel Piccoli in a cameo, but was produced by
José Miguel Cadilhe instead of Paulo Branco.
In the film, Silveira plays a wealthy woman who is determined to see a real
apparition of the Virgin Mary with the help of Trêpa, who has
recently been released from prison.

In 2006 Oliveira
made Belle Toujours, a sequel to Luis Buñuel's
1967 film, Belle de Jour. The film stars Bulle Ogier
as Séverine Serizy and Michel Piccoli reprising his original role of
Henri Husson. In the film, Séverine reluctantly agrees to see Henri for the
first time in forty years out of curiosity to know if her former blackmailer
told her dying husband about her secret life as a prostitute. Ricardo Trêpa
and Leonor Baldaque also appear in supporting
roles.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan, born in Bakırköyon 26 January 1959 in Istanbul) is a Turkish photographer, screenwriter, actor, and film director.
He is married to filmmaker, photographer, and actress Ebru Ceylan with whom he
co-starred in Climates.

Life

Ceylan's love of photography started at the
age of 15, and he developed an interest in cinema at 22. While studying at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, he
participated in cinema and photography clubs and he took passport-style photos
to make pocket money. After graduating from university with a bachelor of
science degree in electrical engineering, he went to London and Kathmandu, Nepal, to decide what
to do in life. Then he went back to Ankara, Turkey, to do military service. When he was in the army,
he found out how to give shape to the rest of his life "cinema".

Nuri Bilge Ceylan
spent his childhood in Yenice, his father's hometown in the North Aegean
province of Çanakkale. His father, an agricultural engineer, had been working
at the Agricultural Research Institute in Yeşilköy, Istanbul. But when, with
idealistic aspirations, he requested a transfer to Çanakkale, the family
uprooted and moved to Yenice. Nuri Bilge was just two at the time.

For Nuri Bilge and
his older sister Emine the move meant a childhood of freedom roaming the Yenice
countryside. It was only to last, however, until his sister finished middle
school. Since there was no high school in Yenice in those years, the family was
forced to return to Istanbul in 1969, as a result of which Nuri Bilge spent the
fifth grade of primary school, as well as his middle and high school years at
state schools in Bakırköy. All the same, he generally chose to go back to
Yenice for at least some of the summer holidays.

In 1976, having
graduated from high school, he began studying chemical engineering at Istanbul
Technical University. These, however, were turbulent times; and lectures were
constantly interrupted by boycotts, clashes and political polarization. His
course was based at the university's Maçka campus, where incidents were at
their most intense, and two years slipped by with little opportunity for study:
circumstances simply didn't allow. In 1978, he re-sat the university entrance
exams and switched courses to electrical engineering at Boğaziçi University,
where there was relatively little trouble at the time.

His interest in the
art of photography, kindled during his time at high school, blossomed at the
Boğaziçi University photography club, where he also took passport-style photos
to earn some pocket money. As well as photography, he also became involved with
the mountaineering and chess clubs. The university's extensive library and
music archive played a significant role in fuelling his passion for the visual
arts and classical music in particular. Meanwhile, the elective film studies
course he took with Üstün Barışta and the film club's special screenings did
much to reinforce his love of cinema, which had taken root earlier during showings
at the Cinémathèque in Istanbul's Taksim. These were the years before DVD and
video when films had to be watched at the cinema.

Having graduated in
1985, Nuri Bilge started contemplating the question of what he should do in
life first in London, then in Kathmandu. His travels in the east and west
lasted months and on return to Turkey he put the agony of indecision to rest by
resolving to do his military service. And during those 18 months in the army in
Mamak, Ankara, he found out how to give shape to the rest of his life. Through
cinema...

With military
service over, he set about putting the decision into practice. And while
studying film at Mimar Sinan University, he took commercial photographs as a
means of livelihood. But at 30-something, he was the university's oldest
student and in a hurry to make a career for himself. After two years he
abandoned the course.

He began by acting
in a short film directed by his friend Mehmet Eryılmaz, but at the same time
participating in the entire technical process from beginning to end, thus
building on the knowledge he already had. He later bought the Arriflex 2B
camera that had been used to shoot that film in order to make his own short
film. In those days, video cameras were not yet an option.

Towards the end of
1993, he began shooting the short film KOZA (Cocoon), using a combination of
negative he brought back in a suitcase from Russia and some stock long past its
expiry date that he was given by the state broadcaster TRT. The film was
screened at Cannes in May 1995 and became the first Turkish short to be
selected for competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

Three full-length
feature films followed that could be cast in terms of a sequel to KOZA; they
have also been described by some as his 'provincial trilogy': KASABA (The Small
Town, 1997), MAYIS SIKINTISI (Clouds of May, 1999) and UZAK (Distant, 2002). In
all of these films, Ceylan enlisted his close friends, relatives and family as
actors and took on just about every technical role himself: the cinematography,
sound design, production, editing, writing and direction...

When UZAK, the
final film of the trilogy, won the Grand Prix at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival,
Ceylan suddenly became an internationally recognized name. Continuing on the
festival circuit after Cannes, UZAK scooped a total of 47 awards, 23 of them
international, and so became the most award-winning film in the history of
Turkish cinema.

Next to follow in
2006 was İKLİMLER (Climates), which again premiered at the Cannes Film
Festival, this time scooping the FIPRESCI Prize. The lead roles in this film
were shared by Nuri Bilge and his wife Ebru Ceylan.

Competing at the
61st Cannes Film Festival with his 2008 film ÜÇ MAYMUN (Three Monkeys), Nuri
Bilge won the Best Director award. ÜÇ MAYMUN later went on to become the first
Turkish film to make the Oscar shortlist in the Academy Awards Foreign Language
Film category.

In 2009, the
director returned to Cannes, this time as a member of the main competition
jury.

In 2011, his film
"ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA" won the Grand Prix again at Cannes
Film Festival.

At the end of 2003,
in the course of location scouting for 'Climates', Nuri Bilge returned to
photography for the first time since military service. From this point on, he
began devoting his time to both cinema and photography.

Iklimler
(2006)

His
fourth film, Iklimler ("Climates"), won the FIPRESCI Movie
Critics' Award at the 2006 Cannes Film Festivaland
received international praise by critics and experts. The film won five awards
at the 2006 Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival,
bringing him the "Best Director" title. He also starred in the film
alongside his wife, Ebru Ceylan. During the preparation of this movie, Ceylan
turned his attentions to photography again. From this point on, he began
devoting his time to both cinema and photography. "Turkey
Cinemascope" is a book of Panoramic Photographs of Turkey by Nuri Bilge
Ceylan between the years 2003 and 2009.

Style

Ceylan's
films have often been described as high
art. He deals with the estrangement of the individual, natural
existentialism, monotonous real human lives, and fundamental details of life.
He uses static
shots and long
takes, usually in natural ambience, as well as menacing silences along his
"stream-of-consciousness
aesthetics". He is known for filming his protagonist
from behind, which, in his view, leaves the audiences to speculate on the
brooding emotions of characters whose faces are obscured. Having started his
career as a photographer, Ceylan makes films on an extremely low budget. His
casts generally consist of amateur actors, most of which are his family
members, including his mother and father. The characters in Ceylan's movies
appear to be people from everyday life.

Romania: Sergiu Nicolaescu

Sergiu
Florin Nicolaescu, 13
April 1930 – 3 January 2013, was a Romanianfilm
director, actor and politician. He was best known for his historical films,
such as Mihai Viteazul (1970, released in
English both under the equivalent title Michael the Brave and also as The
Last Crusade), Dacii
(1966, Les Guerriers), Razboiul Independenţei (1977, War of
Independence), as well as for his series of thrillers
that take place in the interwarKingdom of Romania, such as Un comisar acuză (1973, A Police Inspector
Calls). Beautiful and talented Joanna
Pacuła, starred in his film Ultima noapte de dragoste (The Last
Night of Love) in 1979 before eventually emigrating to the U.S.
where she went on to very successful career. He died following surgical
complications of peritonitis which led to cardiac arrest.

Early life and education

Sergiu
Nicolaescu was born in Târgu Jiu, but grew up in Timişoara,
where his family moved when he was 5 years old. He graduated from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest
as a mechanical engineer. After graduation he
started to work as a camera operator. He was hard-working,
well-organized, curious, intelligent and keen of learning. During these years
he acquired many of the skills that have proved so useful when making his later
movies.

Film director, writer and actor

Mr.
Sergiu Nicolaescu was considered during his lifetime, as he is now, the most
popular, loved and prolific Romanian movie director. His overwhelming film
career spanning well over 50 years, leaves us today his legacy of some 60
movies, for the making of which he used to act at times, simultaneously, as
film director, as an actor, and the writer/screenplayer. In his native Romania
he is remembered as a superstar for his patriotism, the high praise he gained
as a film director, and his charismatic and strong personality.

Mihai
Viteazul (Michael the Brave) ruled the Romanian-speaking
principalities (Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania),
a union he accomplished under his reign for a very brief period (1600–1601). It
was initially planned that Sergiu Nicolaescu would produce the Mihai Viteazul with Hollywood
superstars playing the lead characters. The communist authorities of the time
drastically ruled for an all Romanian cast. The obstacle, eventually, was
circumvented by means of casting, in the lead role of Mihai
Viteazul the actor Amza Pellea who achieved a masterful rendition of the
hero. Sergiu Nicolaescu was able, throughout his career, to select the best
actors available for the characters they had to portray.

Most
of Nicolaescu's films are built around figures and events in Romanian
history, and although showing superior mastery, in the (imposed) realistic
approach they somewhat follow the patterns of historical movies from the
Communist governed countries. During the Communist
period, some of these movies were seen as ground-breaking through either
their way of publicly presenting Romanian history, or the masterful depiction
of the heroical dimension of its history. For instance, the movie "Războiul
independenţei" was the first picture made during the Communist-era in Romania
to describe a Romanian king (namely Carol I) in a positive fashion. On the other
hand, Mircea (1989, also known as Proud Heritage)
was considered by some critics as being a less artistically fulfilled
endeavour. Nevertheless, Mircea was officially blocked from distribution,
until the Romanian Revolution of 1989 ("All
I've done was to present a different state leader than Nicolae Ceauşescu. He understood and stopped the
movie [from premiere]"). Yet, when Mircea
was finally released to the public the film was very well appreciated.

Sergiu
Nicolaescu produced impeccable renderings of the historical battles and
costumes. For instance in Mihai Viteazul the Battle of Călugăreni and in Mircea
the Crusade of Nicopole and the Battle
of Rovine Sergiu Nicolaescu shows a brilliant command of his craft,
masterfully directing a huge acting crew (actors, extras, etc.) towards the
rendering of accurate details, by these means forging widely successful movies.
For instance, when making Mihai Viteazul, Sergiu Nicolaescu
successfully managed a 5000 members crew, actors and extras and, despite the
obvious technical limitations of the communication means in the seventies (no
mobile phones were available at that time, for instance), he imposed a strict
discipline during of every cannon fire and every attack scenes, thus helping
everything to fall in place under his unique order.

His
movie Mihai Viteazul was considered the best of the
Romanian historical movies and is one of the most appreciated world-wide of
this kind.

While
creating such historical movies he was supported by the Romanian's Minister of
Defence with large numbers of extras and war equipment. He documented his
historical movies meticulously, to this end seeking the advice of military
consultants and distinguished historians of the Romanian
Academy. Regardless these films have aesthetic qualities too, and are the
expression of Mr. Sergiu Nicolaescu's vision as both a film director and a
writer.

His
1985 film The Ring was entered into the 14th Moscow International Film
Festival. For this movie Mr. Nicolaescu performed a very intensive box
training with a former European box champion. The intensity of his training for
this movie was similar to what the Romania's olimpic box team at that
moment performed. At that time Mr. Nicolaescu was 50 years old and its box
matches and the hits during this movie are real and against strong opponents.

His
huge work capacity was widely admired by his colleagues and crew. Another merit
of his filmmaking is considered to come from his taking huge - yet, still
well-calculated - risks while filming. For instance, for the war scenes, he was
using real dynamite and trotyle as well as real blood. In such situations there
was always a high likeliness of the actors or the camera operators being afraid
to fulfill their tasks. It was a big merit of Mr. Sergiu Nicolaescu that, for
all difficult or very risky tasks, he was able to show in detail to any actor
or camera operator exactly what they had to do before they did it. In such
circumstances, during his 50 years career as film director and actor, Mr.
Sergiu Nicolaescu experienced several accidents or illness: still he went on
performing and finished his movie projects with courage and sometimes at great
personal cost (e.g., during producing Mihai Viteazul).

An
accomplished battle scenes director, Mr. Nicolaescu, as legend has it, would
have been able to film some 70–80 meters of useful shots in the same amount of
time that the average director would need in order to produce 12–15 meters.